The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted November 5, 2009, 12:56 am by Annalise Briggs

The drawbacks of women’s equality

Farahdiba Tenrilemba Jafar (nicknamed Diba) is a communications officer for Healthy Start, a breastfeeding programme in Jakarta. Her enthusiasm is contagious as she tells me about the programme and benefits to babies when mothers breastfeed. Photo: Greg Briggs for Mercy Corps

I have always believed there are significant drawbacks to women’s equality. There is an unrelenting pressure to be perfect and to do everything: women are now expected to be amazing and attentive mothers, have multiple degrees, maintain successful careers and manage the household by cleaning and cooking. It just means more is expected in the same amount of time. I don’t think equality is about women having EQUAL rights and being treated the same as men. I think progress comes from recognizing women have DIFFERENT needs that need to be met and only by understanding those differences can true equality and empowerment come.

Diba, a communications officer for Healthy Start — Mercy Corps’ breastfeeding programme in Jakarta — is one of these powerhouse women. (I am convinced women like this have more chemicals in their brain which I lack and have always envied.) She’s a single mother, works full time and is going to school for her Master's degree. Diba’s eyes light up when she talks about her job.

“I never thought I would find an NGO with a breastfeeding programme!” she exclaims to me as we drive to the health clinic. I have never met someone so enthusiastic and heartfelt about their job. This is her passion, and you can see it in the way she describes the programme details, talks with field staff, volunteers, midwives and mothers.

Breastfeeding — or lack their of — is a huge challenge in Jakarta. Breastfeeding has numerous health benefits and can prevent malnutrition and child mortality. Drug companies push formulas on doctors, health clinics and midwives — many mothers aren’t even aware of their basic right to breastfeed. In the hospitals after delivery, the babies are taken from their mothers and bottle fed without the mother’s permission. Baby formula is expensive and mothers often times dilute it with dirty water —the only thing available — which can cause diarrhoea and illness.

Healthy Start is working with health care providers, midwives, community leaders and government workers to educate and support women and their right to breastfeed. I sat in on a mothers’ support group where women asked questions — and not just about breastfeeding.

“When can I introduce solid foods?"

"When I have leg cramps [from pregnancy] what is the least painful way to get up?"

"When will my baby’s teeth come in?”

The irony is that breastfeeding is not just a women’s issue in Jakarta. It takes the entire community to mobilize to learn about the benefits of breastfeeding and support these mothers. Many of the Healthy Start facilitators are men and most of the government leaders that Mercy Corps works with are men.

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn talk about this exact issue in their book, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide." He said, just as civil rights wasn’t a black issue and the Holocaust wasn’t a Jewish issue, women’s equality isn’t just a women’s issue. I have seen this firsthand in Jakarta where men are involved in learning and encouraging their wives, sisters, daughters and friends about the importance of breastfeeding, and bringing us one step closer to equality.

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Blog Post Posted November 4, 2009, 7:24 pm by Steve Mitchell

Honored to be back among a people I love

It had been 33 years since I had lived there. When I heard that an earthquake and resulting tsunami had struck the Samoa Islands on September 29, I was taken back to a time when I had lived among the Samoan people as a young missionary.

The Samoan people I knew were a friendly, open and culturally rich people with deep traditions of respect and honor. I was deeply concerned, and felt Mercy Corps could be of assistance.

With support from Mercy Corps’ generous donors and assistance from Western Union, I knew that we could do much to assist the traumatized and devastated communities along the southern and eastern coasts of Upolu and Manono, two of several Samoan islands hit hard by the earthquake and resulting tsunami.

Steve Mitchell, Mercy Corps Chief Financial Officer and Vice-President for Financial Services, stands amidst tsunami wreckage in Samoa. Photo: Carol Ward/Mercy Corps

Upon arriving in Samoa, and after a long drive from the capital city of Apia, my fellow Mercy Corps colleague Carol Ward and I arrived in the southeastern district of Aleipata in Upolu, one on the most severely affected areas. Relying upon my rusty Samoan language skills acquired so many years before, I spoke with a village chief doing repairs with members of his family on his badly-damaged home near the beach.

As I expressed deep condolences for his village’s losses, he immediately interrupted me to express his profound gratitude and deep appreciation to all the people of America and abroad for their support of food, water and shelter. He even wished the blessing of God upon us as we conducted our work. As he thanked Mercy Corps for being there, I could not help but think that the Samoan culture of courtesy and gratitude that I knew so many years ago persisted even in this time of deep suffering. Under the worst of circumstances, I felt honored to be among a people I had come to love so long ago.

As Carol and I travelled along the only road linking villages in the district, we had heard that the village of Lalomanu, further south, had been particularly hard hit. As we summited a small rise in the road, and looked out upon what was left of Lalomanu, I was utterly shocked at the devastation. This village, which I later learned had the most fatalities, was simply no more. The surging waters had wreaked utter destruction.

One family, encamped in a salvaged home with tarpaulin covers, said they needed more help to reestablish themselves, and that many of their fellow villagers had moved inland because of their fear of the ocean, a recurring topic of discussion with the affected Samoans we met with. One woman I met with, as she looked out to sea, said she was afraid, or “fefe” of the ocean. The look in her eyes clearly demonstrated this fact. Particularly heart-rending was learning that so many children has perished, being unable to escape the rushing waters. Flowers marked the places where loved ones were lost. Bedding, clothing, tools, household goods, toys and building debris were scattered everywhere.

A later meeting I had with the Deputy Minister of Finance, Noumea Simi, helped me to understand what the beleaguered Samoan government was confronted with in reestablishing whole new villages inland from the ocean for devastated costal communities. Since so many affected villagers were terrified of living near the shore, the Government had to build roads, bring in power and put in infrastructure for these new inland communities, all the while having to rebuild the heavily damaged coastal village infrastructure for those Samoans not wanting to move away from their traditional home sites.

Tsunami-displaced families in parts of Samoa are living in makeshift shelters. Mercy Corps and its local partner, SPBD, has been helping meet their urgent needs with deliveries of critical supplies. Photo: Carol Ward for Mercy Corps

The following day, we travelled with representatives of our partner agency, South Pacific Business Development (SPBD), to the island of Manono to assess the cash-for-work programme implemented the prior week by SPBD, and funded by Mercy Corps and Western Union. The cash-for-work programme pays each villager needed cash for documented hours of work, typically at the end of the week, to do clean up and reconstruction.

After a slow boat ride from the eastern coast of Upolu, we arrived near the villages of Faleu and Lepuia’i. No vehicles of any kind are to be found on Manono, as the island is too small and isolated from the larger islands. The Manono villages, like others in Samoa, are nestled right up against the waters edge, to take advantage of cool breezes that keep the mosquitoes at bay and ensure proximity to the abundant supply of food take from the reef.

The earthquakes’ two tsunami surges had flowed over the village seawalls and destroyed homes and eroded foundations. Upon our arrival, we noticed numerous men in the village placing rocks in severely eroded areas of Lepuia’i village that threatened a home and the village church. Further down the coast, we saw extensive repair work to the seawall protecting both villages. For the past week, under the cash-for-work programme, 51 men had done an amazing amount of restorative work to damaged seawalls and ground erosion.

Not only did major infrastructure repair work get done in these communities, but desperately needed cash was injected into their economies. Each worker earned 100 Samoa Tala, or about £20, for one week’s worth work, a significant amount of money where the per capita income is less than £500 per year.

I had the privilege, along with our party, or accepting the heartfelt thanks, or “fa’afetai lava” of the village workers and chiefs for this badly needed programme. They were truly amazed at the response of Mercy Corps and South Pacific Business Development to help their tiny island come back from this tragedy. Mercy Corps’ funding will help do more cash-for-work programming in Manono and the hardest hit areas of Upolu.

On the returning boat ride from Manono, as I looked out over the beautiful sea — the same sea that had caused so much pain and suffering to the wonderful Samoan people — I took great comfort knowing that the Samoan people were resilient and enduring, the same traits I recalled them having so many decades before.

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Blog Post Posted November 4, 2009, 3:57 pm by Floyd Mann

A new way of supporting Mercy Corps

In the past few weeks we've quietly been rolling out a new feature on MercyCorps.org: personal fundraising pages.

Photo: Floyd Mann/Mercy Corps

Personal fundraising pages allow Mercy Corps' supporters to set up their own pages on MercyCorps.org. Those pages can be customized with your own text or photos for any event or purpose. You can also set an optional goal for your fundraiser, and there are built-in tools that make it easy to share your fundraising page with your friends through Facebook, Twitter, or email.

Because I'm on the team that built them, I've been very excited about launching personal fundraising pages. The initial feedback we've received from donors and supporters shows me I have good reason to be excited.

* * *

In my leisure time I am an avid bread baker. A few years ago I started an online community for bread bakers called The Fresh Loaf. Community members -- aware of my connection to Mercy Corps -- had in the past expressed an interest in supporting us and did so, but at the time we didn't have a good mechanism to track money that came in from specific groups online and report those numbers back to them. So when it came time to beta test personal fundraising pages, approaching The Fresh Loaf community seemed like the natural thing for me to do.

I created a personal fundraising page -- you can view it here -- and set an initial goal of raising £500 for Mercy Corps, all the while fearful I was setting my expectations too high.

In less than 72 hours we met our goal. By request, I bumped the goal up higher and extended the trial. In about a week and with very little prodding, community members raised over £1,250 Most of the donations that came in were relatively small -- not much more than the price of a new DVD or hardcover book -- but when we bundled our resources together we were able to make a significant statement of support for Mercy Corps. The generosity of our community made all of us very proud. I hope other groups of friends, families, or online communities will have a similar experience.

* * *

The software developer in me must add the footnote that personal fundraising pages are new. We don't expect that we've anticipated all the different ways our supporters would like to use something like this or are aware of all of the types of events they'd like to hold. Please, contact us with your suggestions and new ideas. We hope that by working closely with our most enthusiastic supporters, we can make personal fundraising pages a powerful, useful and fun way to help us out.

Visit mercycorps.org/fundraising for instructions on how to start your very own personal fundraising page.

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Blog Post Posted November 4, 2009, 1:28 pm by Faith Danforth

Bridging the gap between "us" and "them"

I just went to a great brown-bag lunch session here at Mercy Corps headquarters where Cassandra Nelson talked about her visit to the Central African Republic (CAR). Cassandra brought back lots of stories about Mercy Corps' work in CAR. She also brought lots of powerful pictures.

Working here at headquarters, I get to see lots and lots of amazing photos from the field. Sometimes, partly because I haven't traveled outside of the developed world, the pictures can seem beautiful but distant from me — part of a world that I will probably never know. Sometimes the photos portray worlds that seem unimaginable to me — young children holding out guns in their hand as toys, families of 22 living in a room or two, girls married at 12.

But seeing Cassandra's pictures and hearing her stories reminded me once again — every picture you see here on the Mercy Corps website, or in our Action Centers, or on anything you receive in the mail from us — is a real person living a real life somewhere else in the world. They are people that my colleagues here at headquarters have had the privilege of meeting and talking with. They are people who know firsthand what a difference Mercy Corps is making.

And they are people much like "us" in the developed world in so many ways — they want to take care of their families, make a contribution to their communities through good work, and live peacefully.

You can see Cassandra's photos here on the blog, and many other places. Each photo is a snapshot from a life that is both far away from us geographically yet also close to us and our common humanity.

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Blog Post Posted November 4, 2009, 3:54 am by Annalise Briggs

Can you spare a square?

These blue bins underneath the freeway in North Jakarta contain organic material for compost to sell as part of Mercy Corps' Community Based Solid Waste Management programme. Photo: Greg Briggs for Mercy Corps

I didn’t expect my first blog post from the field to be about sanitation. I thought maybe microfinance or agriculture programmes or mobile commerce. Something unique, innovative, life changing. But sanitation? Toilets? Hand washing? What could be less cutting edge?

Actually, I was surprised to find out just how innovative Mercy Corps’ approach to water and sanitation is.

In Jakarta, the bustling capital of Indonesia that is home to almost 10 million people, waste and sanitation is a major obstacle. Not washing hands can spread disease and cause life-threatening illnesses. Not only are there not clean toilets with running water or soap but even when you find a clean toilet (like in a hotel or nice restaurant), there’s no infrastructure to properly process the waste. In other words, human waste is seeping into the ground and rivers all over Jakarta. Innovation is not limited to coming up with a completely new concept, but developing a new approach to something totally ubiquitous in our daily lives.

The project I visited today is a pilot project working on a multi-level approach to waste management. There is empty space underneath the freeway, which has been used by make-shift houses that easily catch on fire. Mercy Corps has developed a programme to use this space to process waste from the communities and make compost to sell.

Yatini, a mother of 8 children and 14 grandchildren, who lives next to the freeway overpass makes hand bags with her daughters out of recycled rubbish. Photo: Greg Briggs for Mercy Corps

Waste is collected in the neighborhood, separated and the organic material is made into compost. This solves numerous problems: a positive use for the vulnerable and challenging space underneath the freeway; economic opportunities for people to find work; environmentally safe waste management and communities working together.

There’s more. Some of the women in this neighborhood are recycling plastic coffee, detergent and soap wrappers to make into reusable shopping bags and purses. (I was able to put a considerable dent in their inventory — a woman can never have too many handbags).

Together, Mercy Corps staff is working with these community members to solve daily problems in a completely new way. Now’s that’s innovative.

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Blog Post Posted November 2, 2009, 9:45 am by Cully Lundgren

A land where fifty thousand dollars used to buy you nothing

Last week, Mercy Corps' Boston office (actually located in Cambridge) was fortunate to host our Zimbabwe Country Director, Rob Maroni. Rob had recently gone to Mercy Corps' Senior Leadership Meeting in Portland, Oregon, and stopped in Boston on his way back to Zimbabwe. We hold small events that are open to the public, to highlight and bring to life some of the great work that Mercy Corps engages in with communities around the world.

At the beginning of his presentation, Rob passed around a stack of fifty-thousand dollar bills (Zimbabwe dollars) to each person in the room. He went on to note that even when they were still using local currency in Zimbabwe — transactions these days are made either in U.S. dollars or South African Rand — fifty thousand dollars was worth virtually nothing.

I can't remember the exact amount, but it was something along the lines of 1/100,000 of a penny. Coming from the U.S., where inflation of what seems like anything more than three percent gets people jittery about the future of the economy, that kind of rampant inflation just seems so foreign. We heard stories that during the worst inflation time several years ago, you might have to carry a whole bag full of cash just to buy some food. Wow!

Photo: Rob Maroni/Mercy Corps

In Zimbabwe, we have a range of programmes including water and sanitation, working with orphans and vulnerable children, food and livelihood security, urban programming (including supporting city gardens for vulnerable communities) and programmes promoting the protection and rights of people with disabilities.

Since the days of hyper-inflation, the economy has improved. But huge struggles remain, and there has been a cost. Over the past ten years, almost every indicator on the Human Development Index (HDI) has plummeted. Life expectancy is now among the lowest in Africa — largely due to the HIV/AIDS crisis — and the percentage of kids who can read is much lower than it was ten or fifteen years ago.

Mercy Corps is committed to our work in Zimbabwe, partnering with communities to improve people's lives despite the huge obstacles that remain. We look forward to a day when conversations about Zimbabwe will be less about how far £25,000 dollars can go, and more about how 50,000 vulnerable children have received an education and a better chance in life.

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Blog Post Posted November 2, 2009, 2:50 am by Kate Dilley

Seeing the work first hand

Lucy, an Economic Development Officer, is part of our hard-working team in Pader, Uganda. Photo: Taylor Wegner/Mercy Corps

The work of Mercy Corps in northern Uganda has included an array of projects and activities aimed at solving many of the region's problems. We have a Livelihoods Team hard at work improving road infrastructure and providing jobs for many of the unemployed. Our Agriculture Team provides seeds, tools and trainings to groups hoping to improve their lives with agriculture. Our Water and Sanitation team provides latrines and wells to people in need. There is constant conflict resolution and peace building through a range of activities including building bridges and playing football. Our youth programme is aimed at providing two crucial skills to the young people: income generating activities and lifeskills training.

While I had read a great deal about the work that Mercy Corps was doing in the region prior to my arrival here in Pader District, it really hit me on my second trip out to the field. I joined the Agriculture Team as they were passing out seeds to groups in Lira Palwo sub-county. Many of the people living in this sub-country are still living in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. Those living in the camps are particularly vulnerable to food shortages, as well as lack of opportunity for income generating activities and economic sustainability.

We passed a school where I was told that Mercy Corps built the latrines and provided sanitation trainings for the children in the schools. We drove over a bridge that Mercy Corps built in its Building Bridges for Peace programme. Field after field of sunflowers was thriving; seeds and trainings provided by Mercy Corps.

We moved between isolated villages on roads constructed under Mercy Corps guidance and direction. Women walking on the side of the road carrying their yellow jerry cans now had to walk half the distance they were walking previously to get clean water. A well had been built much closer to their homes by Mercy Corps.

It is one thing to read all about the work of an organisation. It is something entirely different to see it with your own eyes. It is inspirational.

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Blog Post Posted October 30, 2009, 12:35 pm by Janelle Wellman

The Big Apple

Beaver St: The building behind the street sign is where the magic happens — the Mercy Corps office is near the top of the building. Photo: Janelle Wellman/Mercy Corps

I am living the dream. I am a native Oregonian living in New York City and working for Mercy Corps — my favorite organisation in the world. Our office is in lower Manhattan and is ironically close in proximity to Beaver Street (Oregon's official state animal).

Mercy Corps has several events in New York City that are held at its Action Centre to End World Hunger — most events are open to the public, free of charge and held in the evening. Recently, Keith Polo, our guru in charge of global agriculture, shared his perspective about working in the field in order to alleviate hunger. He discussed innovations in agriculture, market chain development and "green" farming — topics I don't know much about.

Of the many things I learned, I found the way he resolves conflict appealing. His process is surprisingly simple: bring everyone involved in the issue to the table and be honest and sincere. That’s it! I know that I will make an effort to incorporate this strategy into my own life — because those who know me best understand that I like to keep things simple, straightforward and sincere.

At the end of the presentation, we had time for Q & A with Keith. Someone asked, "What can the average person do daily to help minimize their negative global impact?" We had a thoughtful conversation brainstorming ideas: make informed agriculture purchases, spend money locally, help build awareness of global issues, lead by example, and visit http://www.actioncenter.org/take_action to find out about more ways to get involved — it can take as little time as a minute to start making a difference.

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Blog Post Posted October 28, 2009, 1:48 pm by Greg Tuke

A Palestinian camp — not what you might expect

Palestinian camp, Lebanon. Photo: Greg Tuke/Mercy Corps

I love to camp. I associate it with mountain meadows, alpine flowers, a warm fire, a cold beer. And the occasional bear.

So when I heard I would be going to a Palestinian camp in Lebanon, I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around it.

I imagined there being tents in a desert, far from the urban landscape. Hot, dusty, maybe a fence around it just to give it a sense of place.

This was my second trip to the Middle East, to work with young adult leaders who are part of the Mercy Corps’ Global Citizen Corps programme. Meeting these young people throughout the Middle East continues to be a daily myth-busting experience. This month, I found out what it means to be a Palestinian camper.

The first thing you notice as you come upon the camp is that it is anything but a camp. It sits just on the outskirts of Tripoli, one of the largest cities in Lebanon, and looks like a poor urban neighborhood of several thousand people. There is a fence, but it’s impenetrable, and you need a passport and a pre-approved visa to get in. The guards are heavily armed, and I am pretty sure it’s not about the bears.

We got the OK to enter, the five of us in a Mercy Corps vehicle, and drove several hundred yards inside where we stopped and got out. The roads are dusty and the “tents" are concrete, bland-looking structures. It feels solemn, sad, and temporary. But it has been here for half a century. It is but one of 59 camps, housing a total of three million Palestinians.

In addition to meeting with a local youth group that Mercy Corps works with and hoping to get involved in the youth leadership programme where they discuss issues on-line and take action together, we visited a local after-school youth centre run by Palestinian leaders from the camp.

We walked in as children were singing and dancing, and playing a game much like musical chairs. The walls were filled with colourful youth-produced art, along with a shocking black and white photo, showing two young people from Hiroshima at gunpoint, with hands held high in the air.

Startled to see such a photo, I asked the director what it was about. He told me that it is part of the trainings they do to let youth know that, no matter how difficult times can get, people are resilient and can find a way to improve their lives after tragic circumstances like Hiroshima.

“Hope is what we most need," he said, "and seeing examples of others who have overcome tough times is very important for us”.

This is the most consistent myth-busting discovery in my work with young people I meet in the Middle East. And it was further reinforced reading Children of Jihad on my plane ride home. It is written by Jared Cohen, a young Jewish American who recently spent two years traveling in these same Middle East countries talking to young people to find out how they see themselves and the world. He too, talked with youth in Palestinian camps, Hezbollah youth groups, and on university campuses. He concludes his riveting book with this:

I can say from my own experience, living and traveling in this volatile part of the world, that reaching this under-thirty generation is our best hope for greater communication — but only if we engage with them on their own terms. Amid the despair of war, poverty, and oppression, they are the ones who respond to creativity. Could it be that they will also find creative solutions for peace someday?

Like us, young people in the Middle East all desire better education; they all have a fascination with innovative uses of technology; they all get bored and crave adventure and entertainment; they all seek interaction and global connectivity; and more than anything, they all want to feel as though they belong, have a purpose in this world, and can have a better life. Young people in the Middle East are reachable — and they could be waiting to hear from us.

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Blog Post Posted October 27, 2009, 12:08 pm by Carol Ward

Cash-for-work begins in Samoan villages

Photo: Carol Ward/Mercy Corps

We started our cash-for-work programme yesterday, alongside our partners from South Pacific Business Development (SPBD), in Samoan villages that were devastated by the recent tsunami. Local workers are earning a fair daily wage — which helps their families and puts money back into the economy — while helping to clear debris, restore and rebuild their homes and villages.

In Lepuiai — the village pictured above — they can use the rocks from the old sea walls, together with stone that is nearby, to help rebuild infrastructure. So that is not too bad.

The other village, Faleu, has a bit more work to do — they have to carry the stones down the hill from a quarry where other workers are busy pulling rocks from the hillside and breaking them. They know that their village depends on them to do a good job because this is cyclone season, and a storm could further erode the foundations of the houses that still stand and break the road running between the two villages.

Everyone is working so hard!

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