Source

Maps and updates related to this source.

Mercy Corps — more than 1,000 found

Liz Hummer
Online Content Manager

Emergency response program manager Kaja Wislinska speaks to community members who are repairing a pond too damaged to hold water. It is now a working water source for the 400 households in Ada Olaa village.

Katherine Daniels
Senior Program Officer

Our teams are working on expanding desperately needed cash distribution to hungry families in Agadez, the largest city in northern Niger, as the country's food crisis deepens. The funds would allow people to purchase food and help strengthen the market through the summer, Niger’s traditional lean season.

Salma Bahramy
Senior Communications Officer

I’m crouched inside a tea nursery high up in the Central Rift Valley of Kenya, and George Ngethe is patiently explaining to me how tea is produced.

“What you see here will look like that in less than a year,” he points to the hills all around us. We’re surrounded by thousands of acres of tea bushes owned by small farmers throughout this Kenya’s largest province.

Toni Greaves
Freelance Photographer

It was during the Nowruz holiday, when the vocational training center I had come to document was closed for the Afghan New Year, that I first learned of Mercy Corps’ poultry program.

The staff in Mercy Corps’ Helmand office explained how women are taught about raising chickens and running small businesses to sell the eggs within the local community. The eggs provide both income and food for the women’s families. There’s also a similar program teaching women to raise dairy goats in order to sell the milk.

Liz Hummer
Online Content Manager

All but two Mercy Corps staff members have been evacuated from Bentiu, the beleaguered border town that has been in the news recently as the target of Sudanese air strikes.

Rising tensions between Sudan and South Sudan over contested border areas have brought the two countries to the brink of war. Bentiu, the capital of South Sudan's Unity State, has been bombed twice since late February, allegedly by Sudanese warplanes.

by Kiri Haggans
Civil Society Programs Manager

In the Middle East, Iraq has a history of being a leader in promoting women's rights. Even after the fall of Saddam Hussein, women were some of the first to organize across ethnic and religious lines to advocate for democratic change.

Erin Gray
Senior Media Communications Officer, European HQ

When drought hits and families are struggling to survive, the solutions don’t always have to be complicated or expensive. As I learnt from our team in Ethiopia last year, something as simple as a sack can mean the difference between hunger and happiness for a farming family.

PORTLAND, Ore. - The global humanitarian agency Mercy Corps is providing cash, therapeutic food and nutrition screenings to thousands of people in hunger-stricken Niger. Conditions in Niger have become increasingly desperate in recent months as a severe drought, failed harvests, and rising food prices have led to dramatic food shortfalls. The government of Niger estimates that more than 5.5 million people are at risk of going hungry.

The Heads of States of Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) countries should be congratulated on the pledges to end drought emergencies made at the Nairobi Summit on the Horn of Africa Crisis in September 2011. However, limited progress has been made to implement those pledges, and dryland communities in the Horn of Africa are already faced with the prospect of possible below normal rainfall in the coming months. Thus urgent attention should be paid to speeding up the implementation of country plans and the Declaration particularly on the following issues:

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit http://unocha.org/.

Seven leading aid agencies call on donors to act now to prevent humanitarian disaster

Niamey (Niger), March 21, 2012 – A new study has found that between 70 and 90 per cent of people from communities in western and eastern Niger fear their food stocks will run out before the next harvest, creating an imminent ‘hunger gap’. All families surveyed said they had already reduced the amount of food consumed each day because they did not have enough to eat.

Niamey (Niger), 21 mars 2012 - Selon une récente étude de terrain conduite au sein de communautés dans l’ouest et l’est du Niger, entre 70 et 90% de personnes estiment que leurs réserves de nourriture seront épuisées avant la prochaine récolte, ce qui leur fait courir le risque d’une grave crise alimentaire. 100% des familles disent avoir déjà réduit la quantité de nourriture consommée par jour car elles n’ont pas suffisamment à manger.

Andie Long
Senior Communications Officer

Toilets are a luxury in Kanchanpur District. In fact, throughout this rural area of southwest Nepal, few people have access to even rudimentary latrines. Forced to relief themselves in the open, their villages face significant health risks, including the rampant spread of diseases like cholera and typhoid.

Dan Sadowsky
Website, Content and Services Team Manager

Six weeks ago, 16-year-old Juliana was fighting for the guerrillas in the Colombian countryside. Today she's one of 29 teenage ex-combatants living in a residential neighborhood of Cali, the country's third-largest city, learning how to get her life back on track.

Since last week, the Kony 2012 campaign has focused our anger on those who recruit children into battle. In Colombia, Mercy Corps is focusing its efforts on ensuring those young people can rejoin society and succeed in life.

Jasmine Avgerakis
Disaster Risk Reduction Intern, Colombia

With the combination of a broken levee and a rainy season that brought four times the average rainfall, the flooding in Colombia in 2010 reached far and wide. In the southern part of the Atlántico department on the Caribbean coast, Campo de la Cruz was completely submerged under water. And Fredy Montero, the star forward on the Seattle Sounders MLS team, felt the call to help his hometown from the Pacific Northwest.

Humanitarian actors call for swift and adequate funding to respond to the unfolding crisis

Niamey, 12 March 2012 – Humanitarian actors are concerned by the early depletion food reserves of many Nigerien families and warn the risk of aggravation of the food and nutrition crisis if the aid response is not quickly reinforced.

According to the national Early Warning System (SAP), more than 6 million Nigeriens need immediate assistance.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit http://unocha.org/.

Les acteurs humanitaires appellent à un financement rapide et conséquent

Niamey, 12 Mars 2012 - Les acteurs humanitaires sont préoccupés de l’épuisement précoce des stocks de nourriture de nombreuses familles nigériennes et s’inquiètent des risques d’aggravation de la crise alimentaire et nutritionnelle si les réponses en cours ne sont pas rapidement renforcées.

Selon le Système d’Alerte Précoce (SAP) national, plus de 6 millions de Nigériens ont besoin d’une assistance immédiate.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit http://unocha.org/.

Bija Gutoff
Senior Writer/Editor

One year after the worst natural disaster in Japan’s history — the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 — Mercy Corps continues to work with our partner agencies, Peace Winds Japan and PlaNet Finance Japan, to help the Japanese people rebuild. Thanks to your support, we have brought much-needed assistance to four towns where 148,000 people live and are recovering from the disaster. On their behalf, we thank you and offer this brief report of the progress they have made.

Holly Copeland
Mercy Corps Peace Corps Volunteer, Uganda

There’s been a lot of action in northern Uganda lately. But in an area still recovering from the government’s 21-year war with the Lord’ Resistance Army, this is, for once, a welcome kind of drama.