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.

Notes from the field: ‘The pressure is rising’ for Syrian refugees

In response to the ongoing conflict in Syria, CARE has scaled up its emergency response in Jordan to address the needs of Syrian refugees and vulnerable host communities, primarily through assistance to help pay for food, housing and to keep warm through the winter. By the end of 2012, CARE had assisted more than 20,000 people.

In late March 2013, CARE Canada’s President and CEO Kevin McCort travelled to Jordan to see CARE’s work first-hand.

Can you tell us about what you saw in Jordan?

When we arrived in Jordan, the first thing we did was speak with urban refugees about what happens when they come into the city. One of their first points of reference is a CARE office. CARE has a community information centre where registered refugees are told what to expect in Amman. They provide information on what neighborhoods may have housing, how to register your kids in the schooling system, and how to access medical services. They also have an inventory of what other NGOs are working in the area that provide different types of support – psychosocial support, for example, or income-generating support.

CARE is a knowledge hub in Amman for Syrian refugees. And because it is giving effective and useful information, word of mouth is spreading through the refugee community.

The staff told me a story about how an entire busload of Syrians from another part of Jordan chartered a bus and came to the CARE office because they were told they would receive good information from them. That is extraordinary – they pooled what little savings they had just to travel to the CARE office!

One of the reasons that office is so successful is because it is actually staffed by Syrian refugees who volunteer there. So when a refugee comes in, they meet a receptionist who is Syrian like them. These are educated, articulate people who have settled into life in Amman as best they can, and they are able to advise what to do.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. We also met some of the families that had settled in recently and they were under significant stress because, although they do get some food assistance when then come into the system, the cost of living exceeds what they are getting in public support.

CARE provides a settling-in allowance when they arrive. But for the families we talked to, all they were able to do with that money was maybe make first month’s rent. They also often have debts that they had incurred just to get where they are now.

Part of the unknown story of the Syrian refugees is the amount of people that are living outside the camps. Can you tell us more about these refugees?

The urban refugees are really living on the margins. They are poor and moving into poor parts of a developing country city. They’re living in pretty rough conditions.

We saw a four-bedroom flat owned by a Jordanian family who had moved themselves into two rooms in order to rent out the other two to Syrian family. So, in a place meant for probably eight people, there are now 16. And it’s not just rooms – there are stories of people camping out in backyards, chicken coups or storage sheds. They have so little income they can’t afford decent accommodation.

One story that really struck me was of this one family we met in Amman. There was a Syrian man who landed in the Zatari refugee camp with his wife and children, and some grandchildren as well. They stayed for a while until they were able to leave and settle in the city, but when we met them, they said that things are so tough now that they may have to go back.

I had been to the camp earlier that day and so I knew the harsh conditions they had come from, and the idea that it was a better alternative to their current circumstances really brought home how tough their situation is.

Looking ahead to the future, where do you see things going?

We’re seeing a steady rise in numbers of arrivals. Some of the UNHCR people I spoke with said, because the fighting is happening at the points of exit in Syria, right now there is a bottling up of refugees who can’t get out, and the pressure is rising.

There are forecasts of an extra million refugees arriving in Jordan for the remainder of 2013 and into 2014. Jordan has only six million people and its public infrastructure is already creaking under the strain of 430,000 Syrian refugees that have come in, 450,000 Iraqi refugees that are still there, an estimated 800,000 migrant workers from Egypt, not to mention a large population of Palestinian refugees

An extra one million Syrian refugees on top of the 430,000 already there would be equal to Jordan growing from six million to 7.4 million in two years, or total population growing by nearly 25 per cent.

Imagine if the Greater Toronto Area – with its population of nearly six million people – received 1.4 million refugees. Jordan will really be stretched to the limit with an extra million people. The international community needs to act quickly.

For more information about CARE’s response to the crisis in Syria or to support our efforts, please click here.

International Day of Mine Awareness | Reflections from Laos

Written by Chris Wardle, provincial program coordinator, CARE International in Laos PDR

Scrap metal collection in Laos

I have been working in Sekong Province in Southern Laos for over two years on programs that aim to improve the lives of families by linking the development of livelihood opportunities to the clearance of unexploded ordnance (UXO) from contaminated land.

During the Second Indochina War (1964 – 1973), over two million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos, resulting in the death or injury of over 50,000 people from 1964-2008. I have often tried to imagine what two million tons of bombs look like in an attempt to understand this staggering number. If a large car weighs 1.5 to 2 tons, then the number of bombs dropped on Laos was equivalent to more than one million large cars.

It is estimated that up to 30 per cent of the bombs dropped did not detonate. This includes more than 270 million cluster munitions, commonly known as bombies, of which around 80 million did not explode on impact and remain live today, even though they were dropped over 40 years ago. Commonly, the trigger or timing mechanism is stuck and disturbing or moving a UXO could trigger it to explode.

As a result, many of the rural communities in Sekong Province where CARE works still face the daily risk of UXOs. The Lao Government says UXO contamination still affects more than 25 per cent of Lao villages. UXO contamination is a cause of poverty and is a significant obstacle to the country’s sustainable development, preventing people from using land and denying access to basic services.

Some UXOs will be on the surface, but the majority lurks under the ground, which means that any agricultural use of land is a risk. Before implementing activities with communities such as fishponds, coffee gardens or rice paddy field expansion, CARE seeks UXO risk assessments and clearance support from clearance agencies.

CARE also provides Mine Risk Education in communities, specifically targeting high risk groups such as farmers, scrap metal collectors and children. Living with UXOs for so long means people can become complacent or desensitized to the problem and take risks. In other cases, the need for food is simply too great, forcing people to risk farming contaminated land.

CARE was working in Tangbrong village last month, responding to a rotovirus outbreak, and while there I was reminded of how young the population is. Of the 1,183 people, 747 (63 per cent) are under 18 years old.  It’s worrying to think that although adults may be used to living with and understand the UXO risk, children are growing up with the same hidden dangers, but without the same level of awareness that previous generations had.

As village populations grow, more land is likely to be cultivated, bringing with it all the risks of farming in areas with UXO contamination. It is therefore important to continue with the mine awareness activities and the UXO clearance to support the new generation who will live with this on-going risk.

UXOs can be cleared, but it takes time and money. The communities in these contaminated areas have a right to live without the fear of UXOs. Continued support is necessary to minimise the UXO risk and at the same time provide people with opportunities to work their way out of poverty.

Interested in learning more? Check out this CARE video: 

8,000 steps to solidarity: A letter from a Walk In Her Shoes participant

Walk In Her Shoes participant, Paula Gardner, wrote to us last week about her Walk In Her Shoes challenge. We just had to share it…

Paula Gardner, Walk In Her SHoes participant

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported me in raising funds for Care Canada, through their Walk in Her Shoes fundraiser. The $1,782.00 raised will provide many sturdy 5 gallon water containers ($3.00 each), send many children to school for a year ($49.00 per child) and provide safe drinking water for students ($5.00 per student), along with empowering women to create their own cottage industries, and feel more safe and secure in their environments.

Walking 8,000 steps for eight consecutive days was  a very humbling experience. Initially I was quite cavalier and jovial at the task at hand. What a wonderful way to pump up my fitness regime I thought, while raising money for an excellent cause. By day four, reality set in. I woke up with my partner Jeff chirping “Honey time to get water for the family”, and I would bark back, we won’t drink water today.  “Time to gather firewood to cook with”. So we won’t eat today. Time to take our daughter to the next village for medical care. “I’ll ask my sister to take her. I’m too tired to walk”.

And my barking came after waking up from a deep sleep on a pillow top Posturepedic mattress, rather than a mat on a mud floor. It came although I wore orthotics and comfortable shoes, rather than walking barefoot. My feelings of despair came even though I  treated myself to a pedicure and a massage, knowing that the money I spent to pamper myself would have fed a family for many months, and that the women I walked for would never experience the luxury of “being pampered.”

Even though I tried to rationalize how difficult it was to  walk in winter, picking my spots over ice patches, and manoeuvering over parts of sidewalks that people had not shovelled properly, I was cognisant of the fact that women in developing countries walk barefoot over dry, cracked earth, stepping over rocks and stones, twigs, and animal dung in often excessively hot conditions.

When I was too tired to work at maximum capacity after walking my 8,000 steps, I gained understanding about how difficult it is to change one’s life circumstances when the major thrust of the day’s efforts is survival.

On days when I needed extra motivation, I ran to my computer, checked on my donation page, saw that additional people believed in me, and I regained my enthusiasm and energy for the task at hand. I did this wondering what motivated women to get up and walk 8,000 steps every day, although I knew their motivation was simply survival!

What started as an exercise program with a fundraising twist, ended as a humbling experience that allowed me to forge a true sense of solidarity with women who are not as privileged as myself.

On International Women’s Day when my cell phone was stolen and my email address and social media sites were cyber hacked by a sick angry individual filled with vitriol, who sent emails and postings from my phone demeaning women, leaving me feeling vulnerable, violated and unsafe, I thought about the women who are raped, murdered, butchered or  are victims of acid attacks and felt thankful that my attack could be rectified relatively quickly and that my life  was inconvenienced rather than indelibly changed .

I thank you all again, for not only helping women in developing countries experience a better quality of life, but for also supporting me while I had a life changing experience.

Inspired? You can donate to Paula’s fundraising page or join Paula and Canadians across the country who are Walking In Her Shoes. Learn more.