Egypt and Libya

CARE’s staff in Egypt are monitoring the situation closely and our emergency team is prepared to respond if needed. At the moment, there is limited information on the humanitarian needs in Libya. Initial information indicates that those crossing the borders into Egypt are mostly Egyptian and are transported quickly into the country to their towns and villages.  For the moment the Egyptian government does not require additional help to receive and transport returnees/refugees.

South Sudan

When I started this blog, I intended it to be a travelogue, with a record of my field trips to CARE program areas around the world.  I intend to keep that feature alive, but there is so much going on of interest beyond my travels that I am now trying to keep the blog fresh by adding updates from my colleagues.  Today's posting comes from Sudan, where the repercussions of the recent independence referendum continue to unfold.

Highlights: 

• The cumulative figure of Internally Displaced Person (IDP) returnees since the return operation started on 30 October 2010 is 219,184 individuals as of 15 February 2011.
• Unity remains the state with the highest number of returns (52,244)
• Due to several security incidents along the southern route and the lack of funds available to the Government of South Sudan to pay for the convoys, the pace of returns had been at a standstill
• Insecurity has also hampered the delivery of humanitarian assistance in several locations
• Two of CARE’s areas of operation, Upper Nile and Unity were affected
• In Upper Nile staff could not return to Malakal until the conflict between members of the Sudan Armed Forces Joint Integrated Unit (SAF JIU) had ended
• In Unity the CARE mobile clinic was restricted to Rubkona as clashes between Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and armed groups and increased tribal tensions caused several ‘no-go’ areas including Mayom, Abiemnhom, and Koch counties
• However in the past few days the clinic made trips to Guit County to assist IDPs displaced from the recent fighting in Upper Nile (most of the patients were children)
• There has been an increase in reported cases of malaria.
• Over the next 90 days there will be a lot of troop movement around the country as the JIUs are disbanding.

Our staff are working diligently to help meet humanitarian needs, to support them, please visit http://care.ca/  and consider becoming an Agent of Change (and thanks if you already are!).

Kevin

Floods in Sri Lanka

My colleagues in Sri Lanka have been sending in regular reports about the incredible flooding they have been witnessing in the north and east of the country.  Here are some of their comments:

·         Thousands have returned to their villages only to find their homes either fully destroyed or damaged

·         40 per cent of the national rice harvest has been lost to the two waves of floods

·         44,000 farmers have been affected from loss to paddy crops

·         Floods have also destroyed much of the infrastructure and fisheries sector and caused large numbers of deaths to livestock

·         Coping capacities have been stretched thin and requests and complaints continue to flood local government offices   

·         Communities living in remote areas are worst hit, as very few agencies have identified these areas for assistance

·         A range of agencies including CARE have been involved in providing NFIs to affected areas

·         Current needs far outweigh the resources available

·         The change in prioritization of needs from NFI to livelihood support and shelter as well as the lack of funds has affected both assessments and distribution

·         CARE has just completed part of the second round of food and shelter distributions in the districts of Batticaloa, Ampara, Polonnaruwa and Vavuniya

·         With shelter being a critical priority CARE is now in the process of procuring tin sheets as per requests made by government authorities

Your support for our work in Sri Lanka is welcome - click on http://care.ca/ to donate now!

Witnessing improvements in Vietnam

The only problem with these field trips is that they keep us so busy there isn't time to write about them until they are over. Even finding a few minutes to twitter (@KevinMcCort) during the trip was a challenge, though I must admit part of the trouble with twittering is that it I still find it a bit rude to break away from a conversation or presentation to post a note about the very people I'm talking with! But there is lots to share.

Our day started with a seminar on social and economic conditions in Vietnam. Our staff reported that there has been significant, broad-based progress over the past few years. Some of the statistics bear repeating, such as the fact that per capita income is at $790, and has been growing at 6%. Or that average life expectancy is 71 years, with infant mortality at 15 per thousand live births. Literacy rates are quite good with 95% and 94% of boys and girls (respectively) able to read. Much progress has been made in the physical environment as well, with 92% of the population having access to improved water. We noted that 88% of urban dwellers have improved sanitation facilities, but only 65% of rural people have the same benefit. As the countryside is where the majority -73%- of Vietnam's 84 million people live, there is still work to be done on this front.

These trends are set to continue, with Vietnam set to become a middle income country by next year. After hearing all of this, the biggest question we had was what would CARE Vietnam do in the future? Is there a role for CARE in a country where good progress is being made?

We left the conference room to find out, and what we found will be described in my next posting.

Getting Away....

October was an extremely busy month for me at CARE Canada. I spent a lot of time out of the office and in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Atlanta and Ottawa visiting donors, Board members, partner agencies etc., talking about CARE's work and drumming up support. So while my upcoming trip to Vietnam to see CARE's work in the field meant more time 'out-of-the-office" it is a different kind of absence, another chance to connect to the people with whom we work. Field trips are get-away of a sort for me, trips that are both interesting professionally, but also necessary for me to enable me to better communicate our work to Canadians.

The only challenge is that getting to Vietnam takes at least 24hrs of non-stop travel! I always start these trips with a jet-lage prevention strategy - little personal tricks that I've developed over 20 yrs of international travel that help me beat jet-lag. The secret is trying to put your body "into" the time zone to which you are heading while you are travelling, rather than make your body adjust when you are there.

For me, that means knowing what I should be doing when I arrive (i.e. sleeping, or working) and planning accordingly. I knew that I would arrive in Hanoi at 8pm on Saturday evening. As we had an 8am start to the field on Sunday morning, it was critical that I arrived prepared for evening/sleep. My trip started at 8am in Ottawa on Friday - given the 24hr travel time, my body would actually be expecting to be awake, when i needed to be ready to sleep. So, that meant I had to stay awake for as much of the trip to Hanoi as possible. Leg one - no problem, Ottawa-Toronto is just an hour. A two hour lay-over in Toronto - no chance of falling asleep here either - besides, it was broad daylight! The Toronto-Hong Kong flight was more of a challenge - it is 15 hrs, 35 minutes, and most of the flight was in the dark - I did limit myself to four hours of sleep, and 11 hours of boredom. The final leg, after another 2hr layover in Hong Kong, was just a 1.5hr flight to Hanoi, so I stayed awake for that leg too. In the end, I did arrive at the hotel exhausted, and ready to sleep. A beer on the hotel patio, and then lights out!

But the jet-lag management doesn't stop there. A bit of night-time discipine is also required. Once the lights go out, I never turn on the TV, or check my blackberry, or even turn on a light in the room - even if I am wide awake and struggling to sleep. Doing so will wreck my chances of getting a good nights' sleep - guaranteed. I usually wake up multiple times this first night, but these tricks help me get back to sleep.

Finally, the next day it is critical to get out in the sunlight, to really force my body to accept that it is time to work, not time to sleep. A quick pre-breakfast walk, then standing in the sun whenever I can is the final step in the process. Bottom line, I'm ready to go at 8am, and make it through a full day to 9pm Sunday night. More about what we did on Sunday in the next post.

Building dams and communities in Zimbabwe

I have visited many small dams / garden projects in Africa over the past 20+ years, the very first ones I was involved with were in Mali. The local Peace Corps volunteers were helping rural communities near Kadiolo survey their watersheds and place small earthen dams in places where rain-water run-off would be captured and held to irrigate down-stream crops. And of course, this technology goes back way before aid agencies started promoting it. Archeological evidence from Egypt shows these ideas were being used nearly 6,000 years ago!

So, why are we still promoting such old technology? Why do communities still need our help to put these systems in place? There are many reasons, but the two most prevalent ones are capital and social organization. Some of the dams and weirs that CARE is building are substantial structures, capable of holding 10,000 cubic meters of water. To build and install one of these takes engineering expertise, material, equipment and skilled contractors, all of which cost money, often beyond what a poor rural community can afford. Community members can and do provide the land and much of the labour, sand, rocks etc., all of which are essential inputs for the project. But what they don’t have is enough money, and that is where donors can help.

The second issue of social organization involves working closely with community members to conceive and plan how a major piece of community infrastructure will be built and operated. Everyone knows that community involvement in the construction of capital works increases their sense of ownership in the facility, but getting these planned and setting expectations takes time. Equally important is the identification and sharing of the land that will be irrigated as a result of the dam. Upstream land may have to be taken out of production in order to protect the watershed by eliminating the erosion otherwise would carry silt into the dam and eventually render it useless. Almost always the best land is being used by particular families, so they may have to be compensated for sharing their land with others, allocation of this now (more) valuable land needs to be done in ways that are transparent and provide clear social and economic benefits to the community. Donors after all are not interested in building a dam that helps only a few community members benefit, but community consultations to reach agreement on how all of this gets realized are time-consuming, delicate and critical to the success of the project.

CARE staff in Zimbabwe are very skilled in this, and the evidence of their skill is clear when I consider how much larger and how many more families are involved in the dams we are building today in Zimbabwe compared to those I visited in the early 1990s when CARE first became involved in small dam building and rehabilitation works. When I crested the hill and saw a garden that supports 87 families, I knew then that CARE had taken its agriculture programs to a new level, working to change the daily lives of these families, but also, but enabling the production of so much produce, changing the health and economy of the entire district. Farmer after farmer (again mostly women, but with many men engaged) confirmed to me that they generally consumed ½ of what they produced, and sold the other ½. They told stories of people from other districts coming to see their farms/gardens, as news of their success (and high quality produce for sale) started to spread!

Another great set of examples as to how CARE is making a difference, one hectare at a time!

Learn and Earn - group savings and loans in Zimbabwe

I’ve been home from Zimbabwe for a couple of weeks now, and had wanted to get these last few postings up earlier. Unfortunately, I brought back a little passenger with me from Zimbabwe in the form of rickettsiosis, otherwise known as African tick-bite fever! This knocked me on my back for the better part of a week, but is easily treatable with antibiotics (at least here in Canada).

Anyway, back to the main story… How CARE helps Zimbabwean women Learn key skills to help them Earn a better living.

One of the most astounding programs we are running in Zimbabwe is the Group Savings and Loan programs (GSL) in the Masvingo district. CARE helps form groups of (mostly) women who have a common interest in starting to save money. Savings are pooled, and withdrawn by group members from time to time. Members use the funds for a wide variety of uses, anything from investing in a micro-enterprise, to paying school fees, or covering the cost of a trip to the clinic, or just buying an essential household item. The existence of this pool of cash enables group members to have access to more cash then they could generate on their own – and in fact, it serves the same purpose as my credit card.

When I have to pay for my children’s day care expenses, I use a credit card because the day-care expects the money at a specific time, and that may or not be at time when I have enough cash in my bank-account. I don’t want to have to sell my computer to pay the fee, otherwise one of the key assets I use to earn my living would be gone (not to mention that the computer actually belongs to CARE!). The existence of these group savings means that if a Zimbabwean family needs to pay for antibiotics to treat African tick-bite fever, they don’t need to sell a sewing machine or cut back on meals in the household or take a child out of school. They borrow from the group members and pay the money back over time. By simply borrowing a larger amount, families can buy goods at bulk rates, another way of saving money over time. By no longer having to sell productive assets, families retain their ability to earn a living.

The groups do charge interest, but unlike my credit card they pay the interest to themselves – so the money doesn’t leave the community. No external money is added to these communities so no one is taking on external debt. The groups are finding ways to pool and use existing capital in more effective ways. The accounting and financial literacy skills are imparted directly to the participants giving them key life skills, which is an important and legitimate source of pride. GSL programs are specifically designed to cater to the financial needs of the very poor, and in many ways, GSL is the misunderstood cousin of micro-finance.

I would dearly love to see these programs expanded throughout Africa. CARE has nearly 1.5 million women already enrolled in GSL programs in 10 African countries, but we have set a goal of expanding this to 30 million, in 30 countries. The day I spent with GSL graduates in Masvingo was all the proof I needed to convince me that GSL programs are meeting a real need and should be offered to every community we can reach.