Syrian refugee crisis: What would you take with you?

If war showed up at your doorstep and you had only a few moments to escape with your life, what would you take with you? Clothes for you and your children? Keepsakes? The medicine you need to stay alive?

More than 1.5 million Syrians have fled the brutal fighting that has engulfed their country since 2011. In neighboring Jordan alone, 1,000 new refugees arrive from Syria each day. Three-quarters of them are women and children, and nearly all of them arrive with only what they could carry in their hands or in a few small bags.

All photos © 2013 Jenny Matthews/CARE

Two-year-old Faten’s red teddy bear, a gift from her father on her first birthday. “Our neighborhood was attacked, so we had to flee,” says Faten’s mother. “As we left the house, she grabbed her teddy and held on to it as tightly as she held me. She sleeps with it every night.” None of her other children were able to bring anything with them.

Notes from the Field: Working for tomorrow in Sri Lanka and Pakistan

These women are road maintenance team workers as part of a CARE Canada project in Pakistan. ©Wolfgang Gressman

Written by Odette Gauthier, CARE Canada’s Asia program manager.

I joined CARE Canada a few months ago. Having worked for other Canadian development organizations for the last 20 years, I had heard about CARE’s work, but always indirectly.

From experience, I knew that only after direct contact with project areas and communities can one really assess the relevancy and impact of an organization’s development work.

In February, I finally had the opportunity to do just that. I visited two CIDA-funded CARE Canada projects in Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Equal partners, better health

Written by Margaret Capelazo, CARE Canada’s gender advisor

When you hear the word “gender,” what comes to mind? A man? A woman? Both?

Many people I meet equate “gender” with “female.” They often think gender equality is about some kind of special progress for women.

In reality, gender equality isn’t about the individual. It’s about relationships and the social rules that guide them. It’s about how we share power with one another, how we make decisions with each other and how we listen to one another.

Notes from the field: Promoting child health in Zambia

Written by Gioconda Ortega-Alarie, a CARE Canada project manager who recently visited CARE’s Moyo Wa Bana maternal and child health project in Zambia.

Zambian mothers share a laugh from left to right: Berita Kapulula, Cecilia Nkulu, Enedie Hamachonkola and Chipo Moyo.

On a recent April morning, CARE performed a random monitoring visit in the rural village of Lutale in Central Province, Zambia. While the team was busy receiving feedback from volunteers in the area, I had the opportunity to sit with four young mothers waiting their turn to see the health worker in charge of the facility.

Hope for the future: A Q&A with CARE’s maternal health manager

Gaby Jabbour is CARE Canada’s senior manager responsible for overseeing the management of CARE’s maternal and child health projects in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada provided through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Can you provide a brief update on the projects?

A major part of these projects is training local volunteers and health workers to spread health knowledge into their communities and provide quality services. For example, hundreds of health workers in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi have already received training on infant and young child feeding practices and health workers in Tanzania were trained on basic emergency obstetrics and neonatal care.

CARE’s humanitarian approach: Predicting the future with women and girls in mind

CARE and local partners and UNHCR distribute relief items such as blankets, pillows, bed sheets, winter clothes for children, food and oil to Jordanian host communities and Syrian families. Photo: Chevy Morris/2013

Written by Brooke Gibbons, policy advisor, CARE Canada refugee programs

By nature, emergency and humanitarian professionals must be prepared for a grim future.

In 2020, it has been predicted that the world’s population will approach eight billion. Climate change will trigger a growing number of natural disasters. The increasing vulnerability of disaster-prone areas and the accelerated settlement of populations in remote regions of the world mean that these calamities will cause significant damage when they strike. States experiencing poor governance and civil conflict will face prolonged humanitarian crises and instability.

Women and girls are frequently the most vulnerable segment of such societies.

Goma calling: It’s time for G8 nations to act

Angelina Jolie and UK foreign minister William Hague visiting camp in DRC where CARE is working with survivors of sexual violence
Picture Crown Copyright/MOD/LA(Phot) Iggy Roberts

Two weeks ago, Yawo Douvon, CARE’s country director in the Democratic Republic of Congo, found himself showing Angelina Jolie and UK foreign minister William Hague around the Lac Vert camp for displaced people near Goma, where they had come to meet rape survivors. Today, as the G8 foreign ministers gather in London to sign a declaration on preventing sexual violence in conflict, he calls on them to listen to the voices from Goma, support Hague’s initiative, and provide the means to make it work.