Update Against Hunger - August 31, 2005
Field Notes:
Field Essentials: Diplomacy and Cultural Sensitivity
Dear Action Against Hunger Team Member,
Working in the field gives us a crash course in diplomacy and cultural sensitivity. For example, we must learn:
- to react calmly and politely at the fortieth checkpoint crossed since 6:00 a.m.;
- to dispel rumors convincingly that claim the white corn in a beneficiary's latest distribution causes impotence (but yellow corn doesn't);
- to resolve a strike of patients' caretakers at a Therapeutic Feeding Center who are demanding conjugal visits;
- to satisfy the demands of four different officials from four different government agencies who each insist that he's your primary governmental interlocutor;
- to know when and how to shake hands.
Solutions:
- Checkpoints: Smile, smile, smile; many times the checkpoint guards are merely bored.
- White corn: Have male staff members be seen eating the corn-and buy yellow corn the next time around.
- Conjugal visits: Not permitted, with an explanation delivered diplomatically that educates the fathers on the need to stay focused on intensive treatment provided at the center.
- Government agencies: Find a way to work with each, depending on your needs and each agency's ability to help (or hinder).
- Shaking hands: Learn from the national staff. Indeed, members of the national staff are invaluable educators. Listen to them closely.
Cathy Skoula
Executive Director,
Action Against Hunger (ACF) USA
New from US Headquarter:
ACF Volunteers Create Media Opportunities in Niger
Harlan Moore and David Milot, successful real estate dealers in Seattle, gave us a substantial donation for our relief efforts in Mali and Niger. But they asked to travel there themselves to see how their money was being spent. So we arranged a visit.
Then it occurred to us that a story about private donors heading into the field is newsworthy. So we asked for advice from one of our valued volunteers, media consultant and former TV news reporter Kiran Momin. She agreed that the trip was worth a segment on TV newscasts, and she volunteered to come along as a reporter, paying her own way. She added, however, that we needed a photographer to document the trip. So we sent out a call to past volunteers who had appropriate experience. Nearly two dozen applied. We chose Richard Rowley, who said he'd bring his own editing equipment so that he and Kiran could assemble segments in the field.
As a result, for the first time Action Against Hunger is producing its own TV news spots. You haven't seen one yet because satellite relay time is too expensive for us. But our team arrives back in the United States today, together with footage. We've been in touch with major media outlets that haven't been willing to pay for sending a film crew to cover the situation in Mali and Niger. But ABC, AP, BBC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Reuters have each expressed interest in seeing our news reports. Keep an eye on their international news segments over the next few days. Action Against Hunger may be featured.
News from the field:
Nutritional Emergency in Southern Sudan Overlooked
As early as December 2004, we circulated forecasts of a potential famine in Niger and Mali to government aid agencies around the world. We received little or no response until July when the BBC aired a report on Niger that resulted from an editor's curiosity regarding a single photo of a starving child.
Now we're announcing another looming disasterthis time in southern Sudanand once again, no one is paying attention.
Two years ago, severe flooding in southern Sudan destroyed property and crops, causing villagers to flee in search of food, and many took their livestock along with them. Then in 2004, erratic and unevenly distributed rainfall caused a prolonged dry season in some areas that exacerbated food deficits. This also compromised sources of clean water for many families and reduced supplies of fish. More herders drove their cattle far from their homesteads in search of water and pasture, and their departure deprived families, especially children, of livestock products such as milk and meat. In some districts, food prices are up by 50%.
An improving political situation in southern Sudan is actually worsening the crisis. On January 9, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the government in northern Sudan and rebels in the south ended a 20-year civil war. This conflict killed an estimated 2 million people, mainly through disease and hunger, and the fighting drove millions more from their homes. The prospect of peace has encouraged thousands of displaced refugees to return and rebuild their lives in areas where food is scarce. Moreover, the region still suffers from localized conflicts between armed factions, which in many areas compromises food security and limits livelihood opportunities. Adding to these problems, many southern Sudanese suffer from repeated infections of malaria and water-borne parasitic and bacterial infections in districts where health services are insufficient.
0ur surveys recently found the highest rates of malnutrition for southern Sudan in recent years. Relief organizations consider that when 15% of a population in Sudan exhibits global acute malnutrition (GAM), the situation is an emergency. We estimate that the average GAM rate in southern Sudan is 20.7%. This suggests that, out of an estimated population of 7 million, perhaps as many as 280,000 children younger than five are malnourished. And because the numbers are averages, populations in some areas are even more desperate. In Twic, for example, GAM is 30.7% and severe acute malnutrition (SAM), potentially fatal, is 4.9%. In South Bor County, GAM is 39.4% while SAM is 8.1%.
We're assisting the southern Sudanese, but their needs far exceed our current resources, even when combined with those of other relief organizations working alongside us.
So far, however, our efforts at publicizing this emergency have been ignored.
Person Profile:
Profile - ZINAIDA ABDULLOEVA
Zinaida Abdulloeva is our Breast Feeding Support Group and Health Education Program Officer at the Kurgan Tyupe base in Tajikistan. As a pediatrician, Zinaida was head of the newborn department at the Regional Hospital of Khatlon. But with three children and a minimal salary, she looked elsewhere. She applied to Action Against Hunger, and in 2001 we hired her, first as a home visitor to monitor beneficiaries following their release from Therapeutic Feeding Centers, then as a monitor in our Supplementary Feeding Centers.
In 2004, Zinaida became Program Assistant for the Mother and Child Health Program, for which she created Breast Feeding Support Groups of volunteers. Action Against Hunger is the only organization to have initiated such a program, and Tajikistan's Ministry of Health has expressed its appreciation.
Zinaida supervises midwives and often goes into the field with them to spread the breast-feeding gospel. For example, in the Kulyab zone a woman who was in labor asked one of our midwives to deliver her baby. The midwife agreed and persuaded the woman to allow women from the Breast Feeding Support Group to witness "skin-to-skin" contact after delivery. Immediately after the birth, the midwife placed the newborn on the mother's abdomen. The baby started to seek to the breast, and with guidance from the mother and the midwife, the baby started nursing. The women who were watching had been skeptical when the midwife described a newborn's breastfeeding instinct, but they're now convinced and are helping to educate other mothers in the community. The mother, in turn, had borne three children who were each bottle-fed, but with encouragement from the breastfeeding support group, she is successfully breastfeeding her fourth baby.
In addition to village work, Zanaida has participated in an annual national health conference with the Ministry of Health, presenting our programs in health and nutrition. This year, her presentation discussedwhat else?breastfeeding.
