Update Against Hunger - December 21, 2005
Field Notes:
We Want All Children to Be Kids
Dear Action Against Hunger Team Member,
In the New York City neighborhood where I live now, I pass children daily who are playing with dolls and balls, making snow angels, and running down the block with the sheer joy of living. At Action Against Hunger, we want children everywhere to feel similarly jubilant.
Our work strives to give back to children the thrill of life after hunger has robbed them of it. Minimal income doesn't necessarily produce malnutrition, and if kids are healthy, even those from impoverished communities turn sticks into toys, dig creative designs in soil, and play tag, laughing all the way. I'm distressed whenever I see starvation steal that glee, and I'm proud to know that everyone who works with us around the world shares my distress. The happiest sound on earth is the laughter of children, and our goal is to restore it wherever it has been lost.
Happy holidays!
Cathy Skoula
Executive Director,
Action Against Hunger USA
New from US Headquarter:
ACF Web Donations Soar
In 2004, donors gave Action Against Hunger-USA a total of $37,400 over the Internet. So far this year, our web donations have reached $678,900.
Why the enormous difference? One reason is the December 26, 2004 tsunami in Asia. Media coverage listed organizations that were accepting contributions to help victims, and we were at the top of most lists because nearly all of them were organized alphabetically. But also, we made a concerted effort in 2005 to tell our story to the press. Reporters began quoting our experts, and we sent a reporter and a video-camera operator to Mali and Niger, and their coverage was aired internationally. Our second and third most remunerative months (August: $125,000; October: $94,000) followed publicity about the near-famine in Mali and Niger and the October 8 earthquake in Pakistan.
Most gratifyingly, targeted tsunami contributions accounted for only a modest share of our growing income. Yes, in January 2005 donors on the Internet sent in $286,700 but $115,000 of that was for use anywhere. And to date in 2005, we've collected $510,200 in similarly unrestricted funds. January's tsunami contributions accounted for nearly all the remainder of 2005's $678,900.
Our gratitude to donors from all sources is profound. Their increasing generosity is solid evidence that our shadow is lengthening.
News from the field:
Our Newest Projects in Africa
We're planning to open two new bases in Africa. Northern Kenya's Mandera District is desperately dry and sparsely populated, with herders wandering from one scant water source to another. In October 2004, we set up Therapeutic and Supplementary Feeding Centers in the towns of Mandera and El Wak after an assessment of malnutrition there found an alarming rate of 20% to 25% of the population.
Though Kenya is a relatively peaceful country, clans of Kenyan Somalis living in Mandera District fight over territory, old grudges, and trade (both open market and black market). Last winter, 44 Kenyans, including one of our drivers, died in clashes that made traveling by road dangerous. For security reasons, we terminated our program in El Wak. The town of Mandera, farther north, however, was more secure, and we were able to transport personnel and supplies in and out safely by plane.
This past summer, the warring clans established a fragile peace, and many roads became safer. Meanwhile, however, according to our survey, a second year of inadequate rainfall worsened nutrition in the territory. So we're again opening a second base in Mandera District, with feeding centers in Malkamari that will offer both Therapeutic and Supplementary Feeding Programs. We've begun hiring for the Malkamari base.
Our other new base in Africa is at an earlier stage. We received reports from another aid organization, Aide Médicale Internationale, of serious malnutrition in Kilembwe in eastern D.R. Congo, an area southwest of Fizi, where we already operate. Kilembwe is accessible only by poor roads, but AMI is already there providing medical care.
We made a survey of the area last month and found a 10.2% rate of global malnutrition and a 3.4% rate of severe malnutrition due apparently to environmental causes, not to the warfare that plagues other areas of D.R. Congo. With AMI continuing to provide medical care, we hope to collaborate and offer nutritional assistance to Kilembwe with a Therapeutic Feeding Center and a home-treatment program for at least a year. During that time, we expect to treat more than 1,000 victims of severe malnutrition and another 16,250 beneficiaries in supplemental programs. Once assurances of financing from donor organizations are finalized, we'll launch the base immediately.
Person Profile:
Profile JULIE COSKI
Back from Darfur and Ready for MoreWhen Julie Coski was 15, she traveled from her home in Seattle to India on a tree-planting program. She was as thrilled as she was appalled. What thrilled her, she says, was the variety of people she met, the languages she heard, and the foods she tasted. What appalled her was the "overwhelming presence of poverty, from morning to night, which was shocking to me." She decided to pursue a career that would help the needy internationally.
So she became a nurse, then worked four years at a hospital near San Francisco to pay off her student loans and hone her skills. "But it was never my goal to stay in a hospital," Julie says, so she began researching international aid organizations. She discovered Action Against Hunger on the Internet. When she submitted her résumé, we responded to her immediately and personally, not weeks later with a boilerplate form. Our swift availability combined with our ongoing concern for her needs and goals continues, Julie says. It has, in fact, cemented her loyalty to us.
We first sent Julie to D.R. Congo as manager of a Supplementary Feeding Center. Then our Paris headquarters sent her to Côte d'Ivoire to help open a base and eventually turn it over to a local NGO. But Julie had been trained as a nurse, not a nutritionist, and because of our focus, she took time off to earn her master's in international public health at Tulane. Then ACF-France sent her to Darfur, Sudan as Assistant Medical/Nutritional Coordinator. There she helped manage nutritional programs at three bases, visiting each, writing reports, and lending technical support. For the first time, instead of managing her own program, she was managing managers.
The dismal situation in Darfur is well known, but Julie says she hadn't processed how large the Darfur mission would be: It's our biggest in the world with 70 expats aiding 7,000 beneficiaries a month. Given the enormous volume of work, Julie says, the expats had difficulty not getting in each other's way. One of her chief challenges, she says, was helping to "preserve a happy home."
Now she's back in Seattle, eager for a new assignment. After three missions in Africa, she'd be happy to work in a different continent, but for ACF she's prepared to go anywhere. "I haven't refused an assignment yet," she says.
