It may seem counter intuitive, but heavy rains in Ethiopia can be a serious problem– one that can wipe out crops and create generally disastrous conditions.
Mercy Corps’ blog today has a piece looking at how they were able to work with the community to create real solutions:
Mercy Corps turned to a technique that has been applied in Ethiopia’s central highlands. Using labor from the local community — including nearly 100 women — we financed the construction of a series of small dams and retention walls to break up gullies and keep more water in the hills. The retention walls are simple stone terraces, about a foot high, built in a wide U-shape (like a smile) and backed with native aloe plants to anchor them into place. These are positioned in numerous spots along the hill side. Once in place, they prevent runoff from rushing down the slope. Instead, they hold moisture back on a patch of hillside, where it can soak into the ground and foster the growth of plants for grazing.
We complemented these terrace walls with small dam structures that are placed in the path of the gullies. These dams, made of local rocks and standing 2-3 feet tall, are simple structures but do a great deal to break up and slow down the flow of water as it proceeds down the hill. By the time the water reaches the valley floor, the dams have slowed it down enough that it gently nourishes the crops rather than washing them away.
And so with this simple intervention, life improves for both farmers and herders, and both groups can reduce their reliance on food aid or other external support.
AmeriCares
Chief of Staff Carol Shattuck recounts her experience on AmeriCares first emergency airlift to help Haiti with earthquake and humanitarian relief.
Concern Worldwide
Program Officer Susan Finucane offers a video update of Concern’s work on the ground in Port-au-Prince.
Leon H. Sullivan Foundation
“In the aftermath of the largest earthquake to hit the Caribbean nation of Haiti in more than two centuries, the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation has initiated a relief effort to help meet the population’s immediate needs and participate in long-term efforts to restore normalcy to a country plagued by natural disasters.
“To merely replace the unsound buildings and feed people temporarily will not be enough. My organization is working on projects to help Haiti and its people become more self-sufficient over the long term,” said Hope Masters, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Sullivan Foundation. “We who have so much must never forget to help those who have so little.”
TransAfrica Forum
An online resource for the latest news on the earthquake and its aftermath. TransAfrica Forum also held a candlelight vigil at the Haitian Embassy in Washington DC earlier this afternoon.
World Food Programme
“Within the next week, we aim to move the equivalent of 10 million ready-to-eat meals so that people whose homes have been destroyed, and who have no access to cooking facilities, can feed their families,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran. “We are also procuring 4.2 million rations of supplementary ready-to-use foods specifically designed to give children the calories and nutrition they need each day.”
Here are a few more updates today from our partners and friends on the effort underway in Haiti:
American Red Cross:
“We are humbled and thankful for the outpouring of support from our blog visitors offering their services to help those in need in Haiti. We committed $200,000 last night, and increased that amount this morning to $1 million.”
AmeriCares:
“AmeriCares is sending $3 million worth of medical aid to survivors of yesterday’s deadly, 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti from our Stamford warehouse. Disaster relief modules stocked with emergency medicines and medical supplies valued at $2 million have been deployed from the Amsterdam warehouse.”
Catholic Relief Services:
“In the Dominican Republic, the country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, CRS is preparing 10,000 packages, each containing food and water for a family of five. The first 500 are scheduled to be delivered to Port-au-Prince on Friday. Today four CRS staff members are traveling by bus from the Dominican Republic to Port-au-Prince as CRS begins to increase our presence in Haiti to respond to this unprecedented disaster. CRS has committed an initial $5 million (US) to help survivors of the devastating quake.”
FEED:
In 2009, WFP School Feeding reached over 400,000 Haitian children in 850 primary schools. FEED is working to maintain WFP School Feeding in Haiti during this critical time.
International Relief & Development:
IRD, a specialist in disaster response and emergency relief operations, has mobilized an emergency response team to Haiti. IRD will focus on the provision of emergency commodities, such as water, sanitation kits, medicines, hygiene kits, and shelter materials.
Islamic Relief:
Islamic Relief USA announced that it will immediately fly a $1 million shipment of aid to Haiti.
Jubilee USA:
Jubilee USA is calling on the Obama administration to take 3 specific steps as part of its comprehensive response to the Haiti earthquake.
Oxfam International:
A six-strong team of Oxfam emergency specialists has been dispatched to Haiti from the UK today to assist the 200 staff who were already stationed in Haiti when the earthquake hit on Tuesday.
World Food Programme:
“A WFP food distribution reached 3,000 people in the southern town of Jacmel on Wednesday and, despite logistical difficulties, more distributions were planned for Thursday in three areas of Port-au-Prince with high a population concentration.”
World Vision:
“On Thursday, World Vision will rush 18 metric tons of lifesaving supplies from its warehouse in Denver to Haiti, which was hit by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake Tuesday that affected some 3 million people. Thursday’s shipment will include tarpaulins for temporary shelter, blankets, collapsible water containers, hygiene kits, and cooking sets.” Also, click here to watch an interview with Laura Blank, Media Relations Manager at World Vision.
Yele Haiti:
Wyclef Jean’s nonprofit organization, Yele Haiti, has raised over $1 million for the victims of Tuesday’s devastating earthquake from mobile donations.
As you may have already heard, a catastrophic 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti several hours ago. While many details about the situation on the ground are still developing, CNN reports that the US State Department has been told to expect a serious loss of life. Below is a round-up of statements and updates from our friends and partners. You can also read these statements from President Obama and Secretary Clinton.
CARE is attempting to contact our country office in Haiti and assess the humanitarian situation following a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck near the impoverished nation’s capital city. Initial reports indicate the disaster could be a major catastrophe.
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck a region about 14 miles from Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, according to media reports. World Vision staff members are assessing the situation and determining a potential emergency response.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviews a World Vision official:
WESTPORT, Conn. (Jan. 12, 2010) — Save the Children is verifying the safety of staff just hours after a major 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, near the capital city of Port-au-Prince.
Houses are down in the area surrounding the Save the Children office, which was also damaged in the quake, according to Ian Rodgers, the agency’s Emergency Response Advisor, who is currently in Port-au-Prince.
An estimated 1.8 million residents were violently shaken by the earthquake and aftershocks affecting the densely populated areas near Port-au-Prince.
Save the Children has worked in Haiti since 1985, primarily in the capital city of Port-au-Prince and the Central Plateau region, providing health, education, protection and food security programs to vulnerable children.
Right now, Save the Children is assessing staff and program safety, which will be complicated by the onset of evening. Employees who were in the office at the time are uninjured, though about half of program staff were elsewhere. The agency plans to deploy emergency teams and begin relief efforts soon.
I’ve been on the phone for most of the last three hours figuring out the best way we can respond to the news in Haiti.
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has toppled buildings, including at least one hospital, and we assume there are significant casualties (the news has been slow to trickle out).
We do not currently have staff in Haiti, but we do have extensive experience responding to earthquakes — most recently in Padang, Indonesia last September. My colleagues and I have been canvassing our own emergency operations team as well as veteran relief workers from throughout the agency to determine the most qualified and immediately deployable staff.
We will begin deploying our team tomorrow and working now to line up resources to respond.
Mercy Corps recently commemorated their 30th anniversary and founder Dan O’Neill has a great piece on the circumstances that led to the organization’s inception.
A friend recently shook my hand vigorously saying, “Congratulations on celebrating Mercy Corps’ 30th anniversary!” I thanked him and went on to say that I would phrase his comment a bit differently. But I’ll get back to that later in the story.
As the decade of the 1970s came to a close, a horrifying slaughter swept the country of Cambodia capturing the rapt attention of the world in what would come to be known as the “killing fields.” The radical communist Khmer Rouge launched a massive wave of barbarism across the stricken nation, killing as many as 2.2 million innocent men, women and children while forcing more than 600,000 refugees into exhile, mostly into Thailand.
Week after week images of the dead and the dying filled the global media. “How could this be allowed to happen before the eyes of the entire world?” I wondered. In November 1979, First Lady Rosalynn Carter traveled to the Thailand-Cambodia border to witness the devastation first hand.
Check out this great post from Robert Sherman, Executive Director of Mercy Corps’ Action Center:
If you travel through Niger, you may meet farmers like Namata Abba, who will tell you how the young people often go elsewhere in search of work to provide for their families.
The migration leaves behind women, children and the elderly struggling to farm in a drying landscape. It strains the resources of the cities like Niamey, Niger’s capital, which become crowded with migrants looking for a way to survive.
In addition to hearing firsthand accounts like Namata’s, learn more about how global warming threatens Niger’s future and what you can do about it by watching the Niger online training at Mercy Corps’ Action Center. Learn how the water sources that support the area’s farms, fisheries and wandering herds are disappearing, including Lake Chad.
Once the third largest lake in Africa – and a major water supplier for the region’s roaming livestock herds in Niger, Chad and Nigeria — Lake Chad has shrunk by more than 90% over the past 50 years. It is likely to disappear this century, placing the food security and survival of millions of people in the region in jeopardy and intensifying the competition for ever-dwindling natural resources.
Niger is already one the driest places on earth. But in 2005, a particularly severe drought compounded by locust swarms caused much of Niger’s crops to fail. The drought wiped out livestock, which in turn sparked a food shortage that left millions of people hungry and in need of emergency assistance.
Mercy Corps and other humanitarian aid organizations were there to provide help, but the situation is likely to worsen as one of the poorest countries on the planet gets drier and competition for resources intensifies.
Although I’m an active student in the ONE Campus Challenge for Seton Hall University during the school year, this summer I have had the pleasure of interning at Mercy Corps’ Action Center to End World Hunger in New York City. Since there’s no summer vacation from the fight against global poverty, I am inviting all ONE members in the NYC area to attend an Action Center speaker panel on microfinance on August 5. We’ve put together an amazing panel of speakers, including Camilla Nestor of the Grameen Foundation, and Bill Abrams of Trickle Up. The panel will be moderated by Caitlin Weaver, the Deputy Director of the Financial Access Initiative.
In addition to addressing the basics about microfinance, panelists will discuss how their organizations are working to address concerns that have been raised with the microfinance model, such as whether microfinance can really lift people out of poverty. Bring your questions about economic development and ask the experts!
What: Creating Sustainable Microfinance: A Panel Discussion Who: Mercy Corps and friends When: Wednesday, August 5, 7:00 PM Where: Mercy Corps’ Action Center to End World Hunger, 6 River Terrace, Battery Park City, New York
For more information or to RSVP, please email events@actioncenter.org. Hope to see you there!
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
