Update Against Hunger - August 2, 2006
Field Notes:
My Affection for Congo
For more than a decade, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been wracked by what is correctly called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Warfare and neglect has left four million dead, three million displaced, and tens of millions malnourished. Roads (only 300 miles of which are paved—in a country as large as Western Europe with a population of 60 million) and other infrastructures have deteriorated, and with 1,200 Congolese dying daily from conflict, disease, and starvation, the population despairs.
D.R. Congo affects people in widely diverse manners—one tends either to love it or to hate it. I spent six years in the D.R.C. under three different Congolese regimes, and I love the country, its people, its space, its spirit. Like the Congolese themselves, I have high hopes that the recent election will lead to government attention to the population’s urgent needs. But I know the challenge is overwhelming and can’t be solved quickly.
Still, whatever the future holds, my work in D.R. Congo makes me feel I have a personal stake in the country’s future. All our team members will understand. With no illusions about the ability of the newly elected government to change conditions soon, I wish everyone in the country peace and hope.
Cathy Skoula
Executive Director,
Action Against Hunger (ACF)
New from US Headquarter:
Change is a constant at Action Against Hunger, including personnel at our New York headquarters. We have two new staffers on 37th Street.
Karine Milhorgne is our new Desk Officer, sharing responsibility with Youcef Hammache for operations in the countries that our New York office oversees. Karine will be in charge of projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (both east and west), Pakistan, and Tajikistan. She's a veteran of our projects in Darfur, Indonesia, Iraq, Pakistan and Sudan, and she rose through the ranks to positions as Country Director. Currently, she's in the field, visiting the countries she'll soon oversee from the U.S. headquarters.
Shilpi Suneja is our new Website and E-Mail Marketing Coordinator, and she's a newcomer to Action Against Hunger. She earned a B.S. in Computer Science at North Carolina State University, where she also worked as an Instructional Technologist. In addition, she has designed web applications and sites for a software firm in North Carolina and a law-firm in Northampton, MA. She has worked as a graphic designer for another humanitarian organization, the Association for India's Development.
We're pleased to have both newcomers aboard!
News from the field:
As we all remember, on December 26, 2004, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed more than 120,000 people and left 500,000 homeless. This year, on May 27, a subsequent Indonesian trembler, this one measured at 6.2, killed more than 5,000 people and left more than a million homeless. Our teams helped communities recover from both disasters.
Then on July 17, a 7.7 undersea earthquake sent six-foot waves crashing into Indonesia, and two days later the region was rocked yet again by a 6.0 quake. Our team was on the scene when this quake struck, and we estimate that altogether, nearly 1,000 Indonesians were killed or injured. In addition, hundreds are missing and more than 50,000 were left homeless.
Emergency camps for internally displaced Indonesians have poor water and sanitation facilities, and the victims need food. On July 17, numerous aid organizations were in Indonesia in response to the previous quakes, and the organizations are now assisting in this new emergency. Besides Action Against Hunger, the aid groups include the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Oxfam, Unicef, and the World Food Programme.
Action Against Hunger's initial contribution will be to clean wells that are contaminated with seawater in three villages (Bagolo, Legosyawa, and Maswah) that currently have no alternative sources of drinking water. We've also installed communal water-storage bladders to ensure water quality for as many as 5,000 Indonesians. We expect to provide additional assistance, which will be coordinated with our colleague organizations on the scene.
Person Profile:
Profile — Glenn Hughson
In July 2005, we sent Glenn Hughson alone to Mandera, in Kenya, as Head of Base. Though the local population's from drought and civil conflict was clear and unmistakable, no other humanitarian organization was in the area. Moreover, Glenn had to deal with hiring a local staff and providing logistics, administration, coordination, and donor relations all on his own.
After a year of Glenn's oversight, the base employs six expatriates and 180 national staff, and it operates on a seven-figure budget serving 5,300 beneficiaries. The base runs a Therapeutic Feeding Center and more than 40 Supplementary Feeding Centers. Other aid groups have arrived as well.
Glenn says that his humanitarian motivation comes in part from his family, "which wasn't well off," and he believes that this experience coupled with a longstanding interest in other cultures, shaped his desire to help distressed communities become self-supporting, he says, "with a few changes in their mindset.
Glenn was born and raised in Orangeville, Ontario, Canada, and he studied international development at the University of Guelph, not far away. His first professional experience in humanitarian work was setting up communications between World Accord’s headquarters in Canada and programs it supported in Guatemala and Honduras. Then he became a fund-raiser and lecturer for USC Canada, the country’s oldest non-governmental organization, after which he became its Country Director in East Timor, where a mission supported by USC Canada had been destroyed by civil warfare.
But two months later, Glenn was evacuated with meningitis. After recovering, he worked for a school and an orphanage in Mongolia, then as an English teacher in Taiwan, where a friend contacted him from Action Against Hunger in Nairobi. We were looking for a Head of Base for Mandera, and Glenn was intrigued. Despite Mandera District's distress, aid workers were hesitant to intervene because local conflicts had made the area insecure. But Glenn says that security was never a problem for our Mandera base. "Peace," he says, "is a Western mindset that means sharing, and the local clans don't want that. They fight and will continue fighting over water, grazing land, and livestock. But we were external to what they viewed as an internal problem. So he was able to expand the base's operations. Soon, other aid organizations, seeing us operate safely, began arriving.
Now Glenn's Mandera assignment has ended, and he's planning to spend the next year in Toronto while his Canadian partner, whom he met in Taiwan, earns her international teaching certificate. Then he hopes to return to the field provided she can go with him and find a teaching position in the same community.
