Medair News UK 06/2013

MEDAIR | news No. 2 | 2013 | medair.org

Heart of the storm Inside an emergency response THE SYRIAN CRISIS SOUTH SUDAN: LIFE IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY

VISION EDITORIAL

John F. Kennedy once famously said that the Chinese word for crisis is comprised of the two characters which represent ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’.

We live in a world where crises are on the rise. Data from the last 30 years shows a three-fold increase in the number of catastrophic events such as droughts, floods, and earthquakes.

The global number of people who were internally displaced, usually due to conflict, rose from 17 million in 1997 to 27.5 million by the end of 2010.

Being in the face of these disasters and emergencies raises challenging questions for us at Medair. Should we respond? If so, how, when, where?

I hope you enjoy this edition of Medair News where we take you behind the scenes into the decision making process we follow when we launch an emergency response. We take you to Lebanon, Jordan, and South Sudan, where families face life-threatening situations and are receiving the emergency relief they need with your support.

As JFK suggested, these crises offer us opportunity. I hope you will join with us in this compelling opportunity; to provide assistance and to stand side by side with families recovering from disasters and emergencies. Your gifts are enabling lives to be saved without delay − wherever the need is greatest.

Thank you for your support!

Alex Day Director, Medair UK

4

C R I S I S B R IE FI N G Inside an emergency response

6

T h e i m pac t

Heart of the storm

8

T h e i m pac t 1 0 P R O G R AMME S South Sudan:

Emergency responses Life in a state of emergency around the globe

Funding Partners: Syrian Crisis, Isle of Man Government, Swiss Solidarity. South Sudan, E.C. Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection, United States Agency for International Development, Common Humanitarian Fund.

Source: ECHO Global Needs Assessment (GNA) 2012-2013 Cover: Two young Syrian girls examine a wood-burning stove during a day of distributions in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Medair provided families living in temporary makeshift shelters with materials to help keep them warm for the coming winter. © Medair/Andrew Robinson

2

Medair December | 2012 | medair.org

ME D AI R U K

Unit 3 Taylors Yard 67 Alderbrook Road LONDON, SW12 8AD Tel: 020 8772 0100 united.kingdom@medair.org medair.org All photos © Medair unless otherwise stated Charity registering in England and Wales no. 1056731 Limited Company registered in England and Wales no. 3213889 The paper used in this publication is made using 100% ECF pulp from a sustainable source and is 100% recyclable.

© Medair/Andrew Robinson

SYRIAN CRISIS

EMERGENCY

1,500,000 Syrians flee for their lives to escape the violence at home.

I’ve worked in a lot of conflict areas around the world, but the stories we are hearing from the Syrian families arriving in Lebanon are absolutely heartbreaking.

Many are escaping unspeakable violence where neighbourhoods have turned on

RESPONSE

neighbourhoods, and aerial bombardment,

Medair has delivered lifesaving relief to more than 14,245 Syrian refugees to help them survive the winter.

norm. Families arrive seeking safety,

shelling, and gunfire have become the carrying only what is in their hands.

– James, Medair Emergency Response Team

Photo: A Syrian woman and her young brother take refuge in a makeshift shelter in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

medair.org | 2012 | Medair December

3

CRISIS BRIEFING

Inside an emergency response

1

2

STEP

STEP

STEP

With so much suffering in the world, how does Medair decide where to send its relief teams?

3

Identify the Crisis

Ask Key Questions

LAUNCH THE RESPONSE

Where to respond? We scan the

Will we respond? We assess the

Green light. After weighing all

globe for sudden-onset disasters

country’s capacity to handle the

factors, Medair’s executive leadership

and slow-onset, complex crises.

crisis on its own, identify how many

decides whether we will respond.

We analyse humanitarian research

NGOs are responding and whether

If so, we send an emergency team to

to identify the most vulnerable

we add value, and verify that we

assess the situation on the ground

countries as measured by key

will be able to access the country in

within 72 hours, identify unmet

indicators like under-5 mortality

terms of logistics and security. We

needs, and plan a quick-impact

rate, number of affected people,

make sure we have sufficient cash

response that will deliver immediate

immunisation coverage, or water

on hand and experienced staff to

life-saving relief. The team is soon

supply. We communicate with

launch a response, along with the

expanded so that we can deliver

our partners and contacts on the

ability to procure and transport

more comprehensive projects to

ground to get a clearer picture.

essential supplies.

relieve suffering.

EC’s Global Needs Assessment Final Index 2012-2013 WORLD’S MOST VULNERABLE COUNTRIES (2012)

MEDAIR RESPONSE

Somalia (Somaliland)

✓

South Sudan

✓

Central African Republic Chad

✓

Democratic Republic of Congo

✓

We use humanitarian research tools like the European Commission’s Global Needs Assessment (GNA) to identify the world’s most vulnerable countries and assess whether we should launch an emergency response. The GNA Final Index (2012-2013) reveals that Medair is active in four of the five most vulnerable countries in the world.

4

Medair June | 2013 | medair.org

CRISIS BRIEFING

Your donations are the difference Why are private donations so important for an emergency response?

80

%

Most of Medair’s funding (80%)

But releasing these funds

Private donations give us a

comes from public institutions

takes time. When a new crisis

foothold in a new crisis, after

that support aid. They provide

strikes, time is of the essence and

which we can apply for public

funds to NGOs through a

lives are at stake. We need cash

funding to continue our response.

competitive application process.

donations to act quickly and save lives where the need is greatest.

When you give to a good cause, put your money in good hands.

87% of Medair’s incoming donations are used in field programmes that serve our beneficiaries.

24 successful audits (internal and external) in 2012 vouch for the integrity of your donation to Medair.

“To be able to respond to £50

£50

£50

£50

£50

A single donation of £50 to Medair:

emergencies, we need donations throughout the year. We don’t know exactly

Can help unlock access to as much as £200 in support from public funds.

when a disaster will happen,

Supports our emergency fund so that we can respond quickly.

available, we have a faster

Becomes a gift that keeps on giving when public funders reimburse us for project expenses incurred during start-up.

but with funding ready and response time to save lives when it does.”

— Emma Le Beau, Head of Country Programme, Syrian Crisis medair.org Medair| 2012 June | 2013 December | Medair | medair.org

55

THE IMPACT FE ATU RE STO RY

Heart of the storm Behind the scenes of an emergency response

by Andrew Robinson, Syrian Crisis Field Communication Officer

Sy ri a n Cri s i s: Q u i c k- Im pac t Em erg en c y R e s p ons e Nov. 2012 – Jan. 2013

L e b a non ’ s B e k a a Va ll e y

• 7,603 refugees received materials to improve the water resistance and insulation of their shelters.

• 1,568 refugees received wood-burning stoves, blankets, and mattresses.

• 120 families (more than Baby Lilith, the daughter of Syrian refugee Wessam, sleeps soundly on the floor of the half-built house where she and her family are sheltering in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

25 September 2012

“Hi Andrew. How quickly can you get to Lebanon ?”

I stop drinking my breakfast coffee mid-sip and re-read the email. I’m in my brother’s kitchen in New Zealand. After two years with Medair in Afghanistan, I’m glad to be home with friends and family. But Medair has launched an emergency response for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. They need people on the ground ASAP. Am I willing to go? After a quick phone call to my parents and a few deep breaths, I send my reply: “I can be there next week!”

16 October 2012 Winter is on everyone’s mind. With freezing cold weather soon to arrive, relief agencies are concerned about how refugees will survive.

Many families fled to Lebanon with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

We speak to Syrians living in crudely built shelters constructed out of tattered plastic sheets and discarded signs. People speak longingly about the homes they’ve left behind. Many are deeply traumatised and disoriented, not knowing whom they can trust. They worry about their children with so few blankets to protect them during the cold nights and no way to heat their shelters. It has become clear that if Medair cannot help these families, there is no one else who will.

800 people) received water filters and hygiene kits.

J ord a n

• 1,200 children were screened for acute malnutrition and mothers were counselled in improved nutrition practices.

r i g h t no w

• Our teams continue their vital work in Lebanon and Jordan.

• The number of refugees fleeing Syria - and the needs we are addressing - are increasing exponentially.

•T he need for your support

6

Medair June | 2013 | medair.org

is now greater than ever.

THE IMPACT FE ATU RE STO RY

“Compassion is what motivates me to respond to emergencies. Compassion and love. I’ve been doing this work a long time, so I’ve seen the life-saving difference we can make. But I also know that just the fact that you are beside your sisters and brothers when they are going through terrible events means so much to them. They really do appreciate our presence. It’s where I’m convinced we can make a difference.”

– Manuel Jagourd, Medair Head of Emergency Response

Parents hold back their excited children as the truck carefully reverses onto the muddy ground, while my teammates and I look on with big smiles on our faces.

8 November 2012 Today I met Wessam, his wife, and their three children. They arrived from Syria 15 days ago and with nowhere to go, spent their first two nights living on the streets. A kind Lebanese man invited them to stay in the house he was building. It’s barely a roof over their heads, but they are grateful to have somewhere to stay.

As I talked with Wessam, his baby daughter, Lilith, lay sleeping on a thin mattress on the cold floor. Wessam’s eyes were red, as if he hadn’t been sleeping well, and as we talked, his eyes grew moist. With no money and no job, he worried about how he would provide for his family in the coming months. He thanked me for visiting, and I left feeling terrible that there was nothing, for the time being, we could do to help him.

19 November 2012 When our truck comes into view, children break into spontaneous cheers and applause.

What a moment! The truck is full of mattresses tightly roped down and stacked high.

Medair

We hand out blankets and mattresses as part of the relief package we’ve assembled to help families survive the winter. I am hugely privileged to shake the hands of many of the men — husbands, fathers, and grandfathers — who throughout the morning have come up to me and wordlessly expressed their thanks for what Medair has done. It’s a great day, which leaves me both exhilarated and exhausted.

7 December 2012 The rain is pouring down and I’m soaked to the bone, but I’m leaping happily over puddles as I run towards a tall, half-built concrete house, clutching four mattresses close to my chest.

A month has passed since I met Wessam, and I am anxious to find out how he is doing. When I see him, he smiles broadly and slaps my back before taking the mattresses from my hands. His wife is boiling water on a small gas cooker and Wessam gestures for me to join them for tea. I really want to stay and talk but there are more distributions to be done. For now, I’m just glad to see that Wessam and his family are well. Our hired truck driver steps into the room carrying a stack of blankets, and Wessam’s smile grows wider.

When Mohammed, one of our local staff members, appears with a stove in his hands, Wessam laughs with happiness. It makes my day.

We’ve produced a three-minute video about our work responding to the Syrian crisis. Please go to vimeo.com/medairuk/ help4syria to watch our short film and to share it with friends.

June | 2013 | medair.org

7

THE IMPACT

South Sudan: Life in a state of emergency Emergencies strike often in South Sudan, keeping Medair’s full-time Emergency Response Team (ERT) busy all year. Floods, disease outbreaks, malnutrition, mass displacement— we respond to life-threatening crises all across the country.

Bajita.

I am proud to be a health and hygiene promoter because I can tell people to drink clean water and use latrines.

Alawiya.

Medair provided our latrines.

We didn’t have a latrine before.

We like it and take care of it.

Medair has trained refugees Bajita (left) and Alawiya to promote safe health and hygiene practices in Maban County, South Sudan.

Emergency in Maban. When conflict in Sudan forced more than 110,000 people to flee to Maban County, South Sudan in 2012, Medair’s ERT opened an emergency health clinic that gave exhausted families free health care. Today that clinic continues to be busy, and we are building latrines, improving water supply, and training refugees in life-saving health and hygiene practices. Two of our local staff, Bajita and Alawiya, share their stories:

8

Bajita: The war started during Ramadan. A plane started bombing the area. After four weeks, ground troops reached our village. We couldn’t even collect our belongings, just our children and some clothing.

Even though people had to leave their things behind, it doesn’t matter. Possessions are not important – we can get those again. But the important thing is I am still alive and have escaped war.

Alawiya: I escaped with my husband and child and the rest of the village. We walked at night, as it was too hot during the day. We gave food only to the small children because there was not enough.

Alawiya: I now work for Medair as a health and hygiene promoter and I tell people to wash their hands with soap and use latrines to protect themselves from diseases.

Before, we did not know these things, so I am learning.

Bajita: It was horrible to hear the sound of a gunship coming. You had to run and hide. Often, we hid in the riverbed. They came at any time, night or day. I kept my daughter close by, telling her to keep quiet because she was crying.

Bajita: I had a cough for two weeks and so did most of my family. We have all been treated at Medair’s clinic. Thank you for what you are doing. It is good to have the clinic near us. I don’t know what the future holds, but my dream is for good health.

Medair June | 2013 | medair.org

DO NATE N OW

87 % of Medair’s incoming funds are used in field programmes that serve our beneficiaries.

Give hope in the heart of the storm. Give today.

Your gift enables us to save lives without delay, wherever the need is greatest.

That’s the life-saving difference you make when you give a gift to Medair.

Please visit medair.org/donate or use the from enclosed with this magazine.

“What many people don’t know is how critically important private donations are for emergency response. Much of our work as an organisation is supported by public funders. But those first responses — the quick-impact actions that deliver actual help when people need it most — those responses rely on having cash on hand.

Private donations are the spark that ignites an emergency response.

That’s not all: every donation you make can help unlock access to as much as four times its value in public funding. That’s an immense and life-saving impact you can make with a single contribution.”

– Manuel Jagourd, Head of Emergency Response

Bachir, a relief worker with Medair’s local partner, Heart for Lebanon, plays with a Syrian child during a Medair distribution to refugees in Lebanon. medair.org | 2012 | Medair December 9

P R O G R A MM E S

Emergency responses around the globe Haiti. Hurricane Sandy caused massive flooding and landslides that buried homes and farmland and washed away roads, isolating remote communities from the outside world.

Using cash reserves from private donations, Medair launched a short-term emergency project that repaired the main access roads and paid community members much-needed cash to repair their homes and buy food. Now, thanks to support from institutional donors Swiss Solidarity and USAID, Medair has started a larger emergency response—rebuilding homes, feeding families, and repairing roads in a sustainable way to withstand future floods.

SYRIAN CRISIS LEBANON

AFGHANISTAN

JORDAN

HAITI

CHAD

SOUTH SUDAN SOMALIA/SOMALILAND EMERGENCY RESPONSE

D.R. CONGO

ZIMBABWE

MADAGASCAR

© Medair

Where we work can quickly change due to sudden emergencies around the world. Visit medair.org for updates.

10

MADAGASCAR

AFGHANISTAN

SOMALIA/SOMALILAND

D.R. CONGO

Frequent cyclones and tropical storms devastate the island and impede development. We provide emergency relief when cyclones strike and conduct activities all year round to reduce the risk of future disasters.

Natural disasters strike hundreds of thousands of Afghans every year. With four other NGOs, Medair is implementing a project that provides rapid humanitarian access to emergencies across northern Afghanistan.

Severe drought and high rates of child malnutrition require an ongoing response to save lives in times of crisis. We treat malnourished children and improve water access to parched villages.

Ongoing militia violence has forced people to leave their homes and live in makeshift camps. Medair provides free health care and medicine to help them survive the crisis.

Medair June | 2013 | medair.org

UK N E W S

Are you interested in working for Medair in the field? We’re touring the UK with our Getting Into Relief Work evenings to share about our work and what you’d need to do to work for us. For our latest dates visit medair.eventbrite.co.uk. But don’t worry if you can’t make any of our events. There’s more information about working for us at medair.org/jobs

Clair Rogoff (second from left) with other member of Streets Sixteen.

Our fabulous funders The first few months of the year have seen an array of interesting ways to raise money for our work. Here are just three of them.

Soulful success. When Clair Rogoff visited Kenya and Uganda, it led to an interest in the provision of clean water. And, as Clair founded independent record label Central Streets of Soul, this gave her an idea!

Why not release a single and donate the proceeds to a charity that provides vulnerable populations with water and sanitation services?

Clair says: “It’s shocking in this day and age that people don’t have access to clean water. We’ve got a lot of musical talent and we wanted to raise awareness of this problem and help Medair to provide clean, safe water.”

In April, the launch night for the single No Height by Streets Sixteen - a group of 16 urban and soulful gospel artists who all gave their time for free raised £1,394.

And money is still coming in! That’s because the track is available from iTunes for just 79p of which 70p directly supports our water and sanitation work in Zimbabwe. Simply search for Streets Sixteen in iTunes to download the track, or to watch the video you can search for them on YouTube.

Prefer to read Medair News on your tablet or computer?

Visit our online edition at issuu.com/medairuk

A day out in Paris.

For Kally Sheth and Cristina Alvarez, this was a day out with a difference.

The good friends from St Albans and Madrid met in the French capital to run the Paris marathon.

It was the duo’s first marathon and they raised £1,447 for our work.

Kally says, ‘To all of our sponsors – to our dear friends and colleagues, and to our families, we say a very big “Thank You!”’ And she had a special message for our relief workers: ‘May your efforts go a long way and ”cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

Manx-made assistance.

We are very grateful to the government of the Isle of Man who have donated £16,748.78 towards our Syrian Crisis response.

It’s the first time that we have received funding from their International Development Committee and we are delighted at their commitment to our work.

What will you do?

There are many ways you can support our work.

Maybe these examples have given you an idea of your own? Our UK team is always on hand to help with your fundraising efforts. Why not give us a call on 020 8772 0100 or email united.kingdom@ medair.org if we can help you in your efforts to raise money for the world’s most vulnerable.

“I am the grandmother of everyone here! Everything has arrived now and we are very happy. The blankets, mattresses, and the stove – it is all so good for us. Already it is much warmer. We would like to thank everyone who has helped us continue our lives. You have helped us to stand again.”

— Marella, one of thousands of Syrian refugees taking shelter in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

Your gift gives us the power to help the people who need it most.

Join our worldwide team of supporters today at medair.org or return the enclosed form in the envelope provided.

Thank you from South Sudan. The previous issue of Medair News highlighted our efforts to treat thousands of children with acute malnutrition in South Sudan. We are sincerely grateful for your generous donations that give young children the nourishment they need to grow up healthy and strong. You have given them a life-saving and long-lasting gift.

As hungry refugees flood across the border from Sudan into South Sudan, we have seen a sharp increase in the number of malnourished children who need urgent care. Your gift has made it possible for our teams to give them the treatment they need to survive. THANK YOU!