Mennonite Central Committee is a faith-based organization involved with Anabaptist churches. According to its website, the three areas of focus are relief, development and peace.
Recently, its efforts have included providing shelter kits to typhoon victims in the Philippines and canned meat to Burundian refugees who have been kicked out of Tanzania. Volunteers also make quilts to be sold at relief sales to benefit those around the world.
Amy Boydell Zorrilla has over ten years of experience with MCC. She served in Bolivia and Honduras for seven years and worked for over four years in some of MCC’s domestic offices. She volunteered with the Materials Resource Center, which puts together kits to send abroad. Zorrilla and her family also contribute to the MRC through assembling school kits for children in need every Christmas.
She and her husband became interested in working with MCC because of “the faith values upon which the organization is based, its reputation for integrity and community centered development and relief and because of our interest in serving internationally.”
When she and her husband served in Bolivia from 1999 to 2002, they ran a program for working children, where they bolstered interest and support for getting an education. While in Honduras from 2009 to 2013, they served as country representatives. They attended to “administrative tasks, meeting with local partners and providing support to our team of international MCC workers.”
While in both places, they were exposed to a variety of socioeconomic levels. They lived in cities where “it wasn’t uncommon to see a nice SUV and a horse drawn cart on one of the main city streets.”
Because many people are moving from the countryside to the cities, “many communities or neighborhoods are still working to get basic amenities like running water or reliable electricity, decent roads and schools.”
Back in the U.S, Zorrilla worked in Human Resources from 2006 to 2009, finding locations for volunteers in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Through her current work with MCC East Coast, she sees people “sewing, quilting, weaving, cutting up old t-shirts, recycling cardboard, repairing shoes, etc.” She appreciates the body of support for the MRC, with volunteers ranging from youth groups to senior citizens.
Zorrilla enjoyed her experience with MCC and learned a lot from her cross-cultural living: “One of the things that impacted me most has been seeing how resilient people are. The perseverance, hard work, creativity and commitment to family and the future of people who have very limited or no access to resources many of us take for granted.”
She also enjoyed getting to travel to other agencies nearby and see the work that was being done by others, reminiscing: “I remember a trip we took in Bolivia (to one of the mountain towns where MCC supported a project). It felt like going back in time. Despite the different context, the commonalities of our lives struck me more than the differences.”
Sometimes, it was difficult to witness the persistence of problems like poverty, injustice and violence. Zorrilla pointed out that Honduras’s homicide rate is the highest in the world; there are 90.4 murders per 100,000 people. Through her work with MCC and other partners in Honduras, she was able to try to fight some of these statistics, though she admits that “working to change that is complex, takes time, and requires agencies and people working together.”
Overall, she has a positive impression of MCC after her many years of working with the organization: “MCC is an organization that is committed to people, to service, and to doing things honestly and doing them well.”
She valued the faith basis, cross-cultural peace-building and placement of volunteers to serve as ambassadors between cultures, mentioning that, “MCC workers are encouraged to live among local residents and participate in local churches.”
She also appreciated that MCC partners with local agencies that are already in place, so that the agency does not come into a country believing they know the best way to fix a situation without listening to the people living there.
As of now, Zorrilla is working with MCC through its East Coast division, in its Ephrata, PA office. She is doing part time work, helping out where needed. Zorrilla is just one of MCC’s many volunteers working to bring relief, development, and peace to different regions of the world.
– Monica Roth
Sources: Mennonite Central Committee 1, Mennonnite Central Committee 2, Mennonnite World Review 1, Mennonnite World Review 2, Huffington Post, Personal Interview with Amy Boydell Zorrilla
Photo: Flickr
International Aid for Small Island States
The International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC estimates a one meter sea level rise if global temperatures increase by four degrees Celsius. This could happen by the year 2100 and would render the small island nations of Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu uninhabitable.
The dire situation of low-lying island states has prompted the World Bank Group to announce a Small Island States Resilience Initiative. The Initiative was prompted by the outspoken leaders of the island states who have asked the world for assistance.
“As some of the most threatened people and places on the planet, small island nations are stepping up their efforts to deal with climate change. This Initiative is designed to address the specific needs of small islands and make it easier, faster and simpler to access funding to deal with resilience and climate change,” explains Rachel Kyte, WBG vice president and Special Envoy for Climate Change.
The WBG will also increase its aid to the island states to $190 million from $145 million per year.
Small island developing states have realized that they do not have it within their capacity to prepare themselves for the impending rise in sea level. The increased aid from the World Bank will help preserve the diverse culture, ecosystems and indigenous knowledge that the SIDS hold.
The World Bank Group is not the only organization that recognizes the importance and need of the Small island developing states: many various organizations have donated to projects focused on climate and disaster resilience. However, instead of helping, this has served to overburden the government. Samoa has to manage 14 different projects, while the Solomon Islands is struggling under the load of 22.
“Our hope is that this Initiative will help pool donor resources available now, reduce transaction costs, allow for economies of scale across countries, and above all, lay the ground work for direct country access to global climate fund,” said Kyte.
— Julianne O’Connor
Sources: World Bank, The Guardian
Photo: WordPress
How Healthcare and Income Inequality Intersect
While Ebola continues to spread in West Africa, one of the main dialogues focuses on the disconnect between the rural poor and accessible healthcare. Though this is not uniquely an Ebola problem nor a West African one, the rural poor populations have exacerbated this epidemic.
Many rural Africans, particularly in regions of East Africa, are still treated by local healers, many of whom are not certified and perpetuate myths about illnesses. With these healers, who are affordable for many lower income families, improper health care treatments are provided. Thus healthcare and income inequality spur one another on in turn.
Without access to the more costly but effective doctors, illnesses like Ebola and HIV/AIDS run rampant due to misdiagnoses and improper courses of treatment. Even with hospital care, the cost of travel to medical centers (usually over long distances), compounded with the cost of treatment and prescriptions, is often too great for people to pay.
Instead of getting proper treatment, poor populations are forced to settle for secondary, substandard care. In the cases that they are able to get free assistance, the demand is often too great to be supported by rural clinics, which are often sporadic in nature.
Part of the problem of such pandemics is the inaccessibility of rural patients. Because of the lack of money these people have for travel to the cities, doctors are instead forced to go out into the rural regions and try and find the people affected with the disease. But because newcomers are unfamiliar, villagers meet the doctor at times with hesitancy and confusion.
With the increase in medical technology and quality healthcare, poverty still remains a barrier to access – for both sides. The inability to access and properly treat a large proportion of the infected public has caused epidemics to be much worse. In order to help prevent future outbreaks, global health officials are reevaluating how to prepare and eliminate the poverty barrier in future cases.
– Kristin Ronzi
Sources: Reuters, Southern Times Africa
Photo: knowledge.allianz
The Power of Educating Girls
But while 60% of the education population should be women, it is a goal that is missed. Getting girls into these schools is difficult for a couple reasons. The first part of the problem is a shaky economy. The second is that the African continent has only recently been taking the needs of girls seriously.
Social customs illustrate how men are considered more valuable all across the continent. Women are expected to feed men first and give them the best food, and women are also expected to work menial jobs.
A glimpse into the life of girls in school can also demonstrate why women think hesitate to send their daughters to school. Girls who are barely teenagers often voice their fears of being sexually abused when they use the latrine. At a primary school in Enjolo Village, a “cleansing” initiation involves the teacher having sex with young girls. The man could be in his 40s and 50s while the girl could be as young as 10.
The practice caused an influx of young pregnancies and also spread AIDS at an alarming rate. A group of mothers were able to halt the tradition in Enjolo and now girls drink a glass of herbs but elsewhere, the sexual cleansing continues.
While it is not as horrifying as a sexual cleansing tradition, there is another problem that symbolizes the battle women wage in schools. In many areas of the continent, schools are not equipped with latrines or other sanitation that only girls need. They lack the basic facilities that would allow the girls to not miss days of school.
With all the problems barring girls from school, research suggests that the old African saying is true when it insists that it is worthwhile to be educating women.
Educating girls reduces the chances of teenage pregnancy, making them more likely to wait to get married. Education increases earning potential by astronomic figures and by extension improves the economy of the community. Areas with high percentages of educated women are consistently ranked as less dangerous.
There are health benefits as well. Educated women are three times less likely to contract HIV, and they are better informed about nutritional and sanitation habits to keep children healthy.
—Andrew Rywak
Sources: USAID Blog, New York Times USAID Blog 2, CNN
Photo: Flickr
Brownsville, Texas: The Poorest U.S. City
Brownsville is located at Texas’s southernmost tip, where it boarders Mexico and resides mere miles west from the Gulf of Mexico. Being so close to Mexico, Brownsville residents see immigration, as well as the often sorrowful lives of immigrants, firsthand. Violence from drug cartels is present as well.
Poverty, of course, is not restricted to non-U.S. citizens. The estimated median household income in Brownsville is only $29,619 per year. This is well below even Texas’ median income, which is $50,740.
To get a sense of the range in wealth of the states, look at median incomes across the board; Maryland is the wealthiest state, with a median household income of $70,004, while Mississippi is the poorest, with a median household income of $36,919. These statistics were updated in 2011. Even $36,919, the poorest state median, is well over Brownsville’s average.
Although income is not always a precise correlate to poverty, there is overlap. For one, low income may reflect low levels of education. In Brownsville, only 17.9 percent of residents over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or anything of equivalent academic value; 4.9 percent have graduate or professional degrees and 14.5 percent are unemployed.
In 2012, the per capita income was $14,313, putting roughly 36 percent of Brownsville’s population below the poverty line. For a four-person family consisting of two adults and two children, the threshold for census reported impoverishment is an annual income of $23,283, nearly nine grand over Brownsville’s per capita income. This figure is not, however, in per capita terms.
Difficulties arise when comparing this kind of poverty, impoverishment within the American border, to poverty within developing nations. On the surface, and with much accuracy, destitute conditions in sub-saharan Africa dwarf the problems of Texans making $15,000 per year.
Yet there’s another way of inspecting the two tremendously unfortunate situations, in an attempt to compare them. Ask the question, “what is the norm, and how far from it does the community fall?”
In American, an industrialized, economic-powerhouse, living in a place like Brownsville should qualify as living among severe poverty. In other, less-developed parts of the world, places where industrialization has not occurred and the economies are relatively small, the rich may by American standards look as impoverished as Brownsville residents, for whatever cultural, geographical or socioeconomic reason. Being impoverished in that nation, then, takes on another light and drastically different imagery.
This is not to say that Brownsville residents have it worst off or even as bad as those living in the slums of Nigeria, for example. Clearly the latter, without access to medical care, a good education, a stable environment or a supportive social network of family members suffers from a barrage of insurmountable hurdles.
It is to say, however, that poverty happens everywhere, and that poverty should be addressed everywhere. No nation should, or will be able to, hide from it. If one does, it is negligence that fuels the problem.
— Adam Kaminski
Sources: City of Brownsville, 24/7 Wall Street, Chron
Photo: Flickr
Thousands of Displaced Iraqis Not Seen
Headlines covering Iraq focus on the brutal mass executions performed by the Islamic State (IRIS) or the thousands of refugees Kurdistan struggles to support. Lately, the news spotlight has shed its light on the plight of the Yezidis and their escape from the Sinjar mountains.
While coverage on these issues has been extensive and thorough, Iraq is an expansive country and there are thousands who are receiving little aid and whose stories remain unheard.
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) recently investigated the 70,000 displaced Iraqis hiding out in Karbala and Najaf, two holy Shia cities. While these Iraqis do receive some support, the little that they are receiving comes mostly from mosques and local associations and it is not enough.
Abdul Ghafour Ahmed is a 67-year-old man who fled his home in early June. He explains his family’s journey: “After ISIS swept through our village, we tried to go to Kurdistan, but they didn’t receive us for being from the Shiite sect. They were receiving only Kurds and Sunnis. We spent four days at the main border entrance to Kurdistan, but got nothing.”
So the family of nine found their way to the few other safe zones in the country. They are among the lucky ones. As the international community scrambles to provide aid to the thousands in Kurdistan’s refugee camps, there are thousands more stuck in homes.
Amirli is a city half-way between Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan. IRIS militants surround the city and have it under siege, leaving up to 20,000 people trapped inside.
The United Nations has been attempting to get food to the city, but it is not enough. A doctor volunteering in the area told IRIN, “People are dying…The children are malnourished.”
Zaid Al-Ali, a lawyer in Iraq, expresses the complaint he says everyone — from officials to the general population — has, that, “Kurdistan is getting preferential treatment compared to Baghdad.”
Out of Iraq’s 19 governorates, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a presence in 12 of them.
“We are getting everywhere we can within our security limitations,” Kieran Dwyer, chief of communications for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, defends the U.N.’s lack of aid to cities like Amirli. “This is Iraq, the security limitations are not arbitrarily or unnecessarily applied; it’s a dangerous place.”
The U.N. and other aid agencies have a delicate line to walk, struggling to determine how to get the most aid to the most people without putting themselves in unnecessary danger.
Conditions, Dwyer says, are unstable in Iraq and one minute an area could be secure and the next it may need to be evacuated, and vice versa. The ICRC has been able to finally get supplies to Anbar, the region where IRIS caused over half a million residents to flee. But more is needed.
– Julianne O’Connor
Sources: IRIN
Photo: Neuron Learning
ICNL: Legal Advice for Nonprofits
For nonprofit organizations operating on a global stage, understanding the constraints of legalities across borders is paramount. One nonprofit, the International Center For Not-For-Profit Law, or ICNL, seeks to provide legal advice and information for such NGOs.
Launched in 1992, ICNL states that it is a “source for information in the legal environment,” with respect to civil society, philanthropy and public participation. The nonprofit provides legal information and advice to NGOs worldwide in an effort to facilitate adequate legal response and education.
ICNL maintains an active list of staff that hail from countries on multiple continents. In fact, the members on its Board of Directors hail from over 30 different countries.
As noted in its mission statement, the nonprofit seeks a legal environment that “strengthens civil society, advances the freedoms of association and assembly, fosters philanthropy and enables public participation around the world.”
The organization focuses on a number of objectives. According to its website, these include empowering local stakeholders, facilitating cross-border philanthropy, developing an analytic basis for its work and fostering global norms and multilateral engagement.
While ICNL does not provide legal service for NGOs in the U.S., it does work with a host of U.S. organizations, including NGOS, with civil society issues.
In addition, ICNL maintains relationships with several different organizations to “assist and implement” its international programs. These organizations include the European Center for Non-For-Profit Law (ECNL), the Bulgarian Center for Non-For-Profit Law (BCNL) and the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, LLC. The latter is a limited liability company (LLC) that works with ICNL to undertake “activities to support programs consistent with ICNL’s mission around the world.”
Earlier this month, ICNL’s President and CEO Douglas Rutzen was named one of the U.S.’s top nonprofit executives and strategists by The NonProfit Times.
No doubt, navigating a world that is separated by borders with different rules and regulations makes for a tricky situation. Because of this, it is likely that ICNL’s work will continue to be of importance in the future.
– Ethan Safran
Sources: ICNL, The Nonprofit Times
Photo: hkbutterfly
Facebook Helps Eliminate Health Care Barriers in Africa
As part of a trend to eliminate healthcare barriers for the poor, Facebook is helping to provide free access to advantageous websites to impoverished women in Africa. Some of these websites target pregnant women and advocate and educate for better maternal health.
At this point, inaccessibility to expensive data plans has been a large barrier between women and the internet. With a new mobile app that the company unveiled this past week, women will have free access to websites like MAMA (Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action) and WRAPP, which advocates for women’s rights. The application was designed in coordination with local government groups to fill in some of the communication gaps that persist.
With the first initiative scheduled for Zambia, the pilot program has the potential to branch out to other developing countries. Though the program is accessible to both men and women, women will be disproportionately helped through this program. With Zambia having a significant gender inequality gap, women will be able to gain more from having access to healthcare information and job postings that will now become more accessible.
As part of the growing technologies industry looking to expand their market to the estimated five billion people without internet access, Facebook is reaching out to the underexposed in Africa. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said of the project, “I believe connectivity is a human right.” With the motivation to connect and network users of the application to other parts of the country and the world, Zuckerberg is well on his way to an integrated global community.
The application is a game-changer for women’s rights, particularly in traditionally oppressive governments. With support from many international women’s rights groups as well as vocal laudation from the Executive Director of U.N. Women, the Facebook app has the potential to create a social revolution around the world.
– Kristin Ronzi
Sources: The Telegraph, Tech Crunch
Photo: TechCrunch
Skating toward a Difference in Palestine
For example, every Friday since December of 2009, Nabi Saleh’s residents have marched in protest at the confiscation of their land and the consequences they are faced with are tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and occasionally even live fire. There have been more than 100 imprisonments of villagers since demonstrations began and a large proportion of these people are teenagers, who can be held for days, weeks or months.
To help alleviate this and save the children of Palestine from violence, founder of SkatePal, Charlie Davis, 27, had raised enough funds to build Palestine’s first ever skate park. SkatePal was created in 2012 and is a volunteer-run, nonprofit charitable organization. One of the main reasons Davis wanted to build a skate park here was to give the children something healthy to detract their attention from the violence going on in the community.
Currently, SkatePal has 12 volunteers but only two who live in Palestine. Among one of the two is 18-year-old Adham Tamimi, who says that if he wasn’t skating, he would “probably be involved in protests, drugs and stuff like that. But I don’t need drugs or any other stuff, like demos, to be a rebel, because skating is way more than just an extreme sport. It’s a lifestyle that I have to commit to.”
The second volunteer in Palestine is 16-year-old Aram Sabbah. He was involved in a protest in July in which thousands across the West Bank marched in protest against Israeli aggression toward Gaza. To show their protest, kids were throwing stones and when Sabbah ran out of stones to throw, he went to get more and was injured. The Israel Defense Forces blew a hole in Sabbah’s leg.
After the accident Sabbah, still skated around even on his crutches, which actually seemed to help him learn new tricks. In his good fortune, none of his bones were broken and his crutches will only assist him for a little longer.
Moving forward, Davis and his team of volunteers with SkatePal, will design and build three new skateparks throughout Palestine. Thus far, SkatePal is at about 75 percent of their donation goal, 15,000 pounds ($24,872.)
– Brooke Smith
Sources: Vice, Washington’s Blog
Photo: Flickr
Hunger in Liberia
In 1980, a military regime replaced the civilian government in Liberia. The people rebelled in 1989. The resulting conflict continued until 2003, when a peace agreement was signed. Then, in 2006, Sirleaf, the first post-war president, was sworn into office. The relative stability since 2006 proved helpful in the effort of reducing hunger in Liberia.
Nearly one-third of the Liberian population is undernourished. Every fifth household is food insecure, according to a 2012 government-led survey.
The staple food for families is rice. Liberia imports 90 percent of this commodity, so any change in price has a large impact on the Liberian people. For example, in 2008, the price for a 110 pound bag of rice equaled one month’s salary for a security guard in the country’s capital of Monrovia, a relatively well-paying position. That bag of rice could only feed a family of seven (the average is five in Liberia) for around two weeks.
In addition, about 14 percent of children under five are underweight and these children’s mortality rate was 7.8 percent in 2011. At one point in 2009, health officials feared that an estimated 74,000 Liberian children would die from malnutrition by 2015.
That fear motivated them to act.
In 2009, health officials succeeded in getting the government to adopt a policy committing them to improve food security, especially in the rural areas where it were most needed. John Agbor, head of child survival at UNICEF, said back then that the policy “refocuses nutrition and puts it where it ought to be—on the higher agenda of government.”
Sirleaf’s government did even more. Acknowledging that poverty and food insecurity are strongly correlated, Sirleaf’s government first implemented Poverty Reduction Strategy and then Poverty Reduction Strategy II, which built upon the successes its predecessor.
The policies’ successes were possibly reflected in 2013’s Global Hunger Index. While Liberia ranked only 50th out of 78 and remained in a “serious” status, its GHI ranking has been steadily improving since 1995.
Unfortunately, the recent Ebola outbreak in Liberia has presented Sirleaf’s government with new challenges in reducing hunger.
In a controversial move, Sirleaf ordered a quarantine of sizable villages, which have been cordoned off by the military. The villagers lack access to food and medical supplies, and the threat of starvation is motivating some to attempt an escape, which many fear will help Ebola spread.
Unless the government and other organizations can find a way to keep these quarantined populations fed, hunger among the people could make Ebola quite difficult to contain in Liberia.
– Ryan Yanke
Sources: World Food Programme, Action Against Hunger, IRIN, Newsweek, International Food Policy Research Institute 1, International Food Policy Research Institute 2, World Health Organization
Photo: Flickr
What is the MCC?
Recently, its efforts have included providing shelter kits to typhoon victims in the Philippines and canned meat to Burundian refugees who have been kicked out of Tanzania. Volunteers also make quilts to be sold at relief sales to benefit those around the world.
Amy Boydell Zorrilla has over ten years of experience with MCC. She served in Bolivia and Honduras for seven years and worked for over four years in some of MCC’s domestic offices. She volunteered with the Materials Resource Center, which puts together kits to send abroad. Zorrilla and her family also contribute to the MRC through assembling school kits for children in need every Christmas.
She and her husband became interested in working with MCC because of “the faith values upon which the organization is based, its reputation for integrity and community centered development and relief and because of our interest in serving internationally.”
When she and her husband served in Bolivia from 1999 to 2002, they ran a program for working children, where they bolstered interest and support for getting an education. While in Honduras from 2009 to 2013, they served as country representatives. They attended to “administrative tasks, meeting with local partners and providing support to our team of international MCC workers.”
While in both places, they were exposed to a variety of socioeconomic levels. They lived in cities where “it wasn’t uncommon to see a nice SUV and a horse drawn cart on one of the main city streets.”
Because many people are moving from the countryside to the cities, “many communities or neighborhoods are still working to get basic amenities like running water or reliable electricity, decent roads and schools.”
Back in the U.S, Zorrilla worked in Human Resources from 2006 to 2009, finding locations for volunteers in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Through her current work with MCC East Coast, she sees people “sewing, quilting, weaving, cutting up old t-shirts, recycling cardboard, repairing shoes, etc.” She appreciates the body of support for the MRC, with volunteers ranging from youth groups to senior citizens.
Zorrilla enjoyed her experience with MCC and learned a lot from her cross-cultural living: “One of the things that impacted me most has been seeing how resilient people are. The perseverance, hard work, creativity and commitment to family and the future of people who have very limited or no access to resources many of us take for granted.”
She also enjoyed getting to travel to other agencies nearby and see the work that was being done by others, reminiscing: “I remember a trip we took in Bolivia (to one of the mountain towns where MCC supported a project). It felt like going back in time. Despite the different context, the commonalities of our lives struck me more than the differences.”
Sometimes, it was difficult to witness the persistence of problems like poverty, injustice and violence. Zorrilla pointed out that Honduras’s homicide rate is the highest in the world; there are 90.4 murders per 100,000 people. Through her work with MCC and other partners in Honduras, she was able to try to fight some of these statistics, though she admits that “working to change that is complex, takes time, and requires agencies and people working together.”
Overall, she has a positive impression of MCC after her many years of working with the organization: “MCC is an organization that is committed to people, to service, and to doing things honestly and doing them well.”
She valued the faith basis, cross-cultural peace-building and placement of volunteers to serve as ambassadors between cultures, mentioning that, “MCC workers are encouraged to live among local residents and participate in local churches.”
She also appreciated that MCC partners with local agencies that are already in place, so that the agency does not come into a country believing they know the best way to fix a situation without listening to the people living there.
As of now, Zorrilla is working with MCC through its East Coast division, in its Ephrata, PA office. She is doing part time work, helping out where needed. Zorrilla is just one of MCC’s many volunteers working to bring relief, development, and peace to different regions of the world.
– Monica Roth
Sources: Mennonite Central Committee 1, Mennonnite Central Committee 2, Mennonnite World Review 1, Mennonnite World Review 2, Huffington Post, Personal Interview with Amy Boydell Zorrilla
Photo: Flickr