I still remember the 1st of May 2011. His Excellency Mwai Kibaki, the President of Kenya, declared the ongoing drought a national disaster and called upon donors and well wishers to support the country in that difficult time. For the many Kenyans living in marginal areas, the failure of two successive rainy seasons had made access to water for their household, livestock and farming needs increasingly difficult. For pastoralists who already live in the harsh arid and semi-arid areas, this made their already difficult lives even harder. The situation then worsened, with the declaration of famine in parts of southern Somalia. More and more families fled the country, leading to an unprecedented influx of refugees to the Dadaab complex in Northern Kenya.

It was really encouraging to receive the full support of CARE International members, who readily sent us emergency staff from their head offices. These colleagues covered all sectors including water and sanitation, gender, media and communications and numerous other field experts. This support is much appreciated in such a crisis.

“Building resilience, not dependency”
Over the past six months, as the crisis has put the region’s most vulnerable people in an even more precarious situation, CARE Kenya has been able to assist over 1 million of the most vulnerable pastoralists as well as refugees in Dadaab directly. While we are proud of this achievement, many challenges still remain. The security situation in North-Eastern Kenya and Dadaab has deteriorated. This has meant that our work in Dadaab has had to be limited to only life-saving activities. But we don’t intend to stop what we are doing; aiming to defend dignity, fight poverty and provide basic life-saving assistance to those who need it most.

CARE is working to build resilience among poor communities to help them to better deal with challenges like climate change and rising food prices. Image: Sabine Wilke/CARE

The approach we have taken is to ‘build resilience, not dependency’. CARE recognises that with climate change, population growth and rising food and oil prices, poor communities in the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya’s North-East and Somali refugees need assistance that builds on their own capacity, skills and experience. The communities we work with are far from passive, helpless and dependent. We see this every day: In Dadaab, CARE is being supported by more than 2,200 refugee workers in managing food distributions, teaching children and creating community committees. In North-Eastern Kenya, we are building local communities’ skills in managing water and other natural resources, in increasing financial service provision and financial literacy, and improving livestock market chains.

We know that these crises are going to hit again, and we want to build peoples’ capacity to cope with the problems without asking for external assistance. This is how we can help defeat poverty and defend the dignity of those we work with.

In the red dusty landscape of southern Zimbabwe, a slight figure walks under the blazing afternoon sun with a tin bucket swinging by her side.

It looks like a difficult and tiring task, but 10-year old Agnes* is happy to collect clean safe water that is just 400 metres from her home.

Every afternoon, Agnes walks to a borehole that has been recently repaired by CARE to provide her and 300 other families with safe, clean water near their homes and school.

Collecting water is a task that is almost exclusively carried out by women and girls in developing countries like Zimbabwe. Without a safe borehole to collect water from, many females in Agnes’ community used to walk for hours, several times a day, to collect enough water for their families to drink, bathe and cook with. Even after walking long distances to find water, what they would source may not necessarily be safe to drink.

The lack of access to clean water, and lack of toilets and information about sanitation have caused illness in Agnes’ community – in 2009 the cholera outbreak that devastated parts of Zimbabwe claimed 4,000 lives and infected more than 100,000 people.

Since CARE’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project has been operating in the area, this has changed for many families.

Now, 300 toilets have been built by local communities, with assistance from CARE. Over 40 boreholes have been rehabilitated – providing access to safe water for thousands of people like Agnes.

‘The borehole is closer to our house, so it’s a good thing that we can get water there now. It is about 400 metres from our home and 200 metres from my school.’

Agnes has developed a new interest at school that helps her make the most of the new water and sanitation resources. She is a member of her school’s health club, a group that is open to any student who would like to learn about preventing illness through sanitation and hygiene practices.

CARE encourages teachers in the community to start a health and hygiene education club at their school, and provides the teachers with support and advice on how to teach hygiene principles that will improve the health of students, and their families.

‘I really like being in the health club because I get the explanation about how diseases are spread. We learn about mosquitoes, diarrhoea and houseflies. We learn through drawings and from books,’ Agnes says.

‘I teach my younger brother and sister what I learn as well. Now, we wash our hands after going to the toilet, we know how to store water in the house and not to play in stagnant water. ‘

Now, her daily routine includes sanitation principles at every opportunity – and she and her family are healthier because of the initiatives she has shared with them.

‘In the morning, I make my bed, eat breakfast, sweep the house and bathe while my mother collects the first lot of water from the borehole.

In the afternoon, I bathe again, sweep, wash the dishes, collect more water with my mother and help make the fire for cooking dinner.‘

With less time spent collecting water, and more activities in her home to keep her family healthy, Agnes is able to concentrate more on her studies. And what does a young girl with a passion for health and hygiene want to do when she leaves school? Help others to be healthy too, of course!

Agnes explains, ‘When I finish school, I would like to be a nurse because I don’t want people to get sick. I want to take care of them.’

Sign up to Walk in Her Shoes today!

*Names changed to protect children

Two years since the devastating earthquake which killed more than 220,000 people, Haitians are rebuilding their lives and regaining their confidence with assistance from CARE.

CARE has a five-year, $US100 million plan to help Haiti recover. These photos document the past two years of CARE’s work in Haiti, including the initiail devastation and the recovery and rebuilding phases.

The devastation in Port-au-Prince in the moments after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

CARE began responding immediately, distributing food, water purification tablets and shelter to those in need. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

CARE began responding immediately, distributing food, water purification tablets and shelter to those in need. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

A CARE distribution of rice which targeted women in the first weeks after the earthquake. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

17 year old Choumika came to hospital after developing symptoms of cholera during the outbreak in late 2010. There is a great deal of misinformation about the disease and treatment, which CARE is working to combat. Image: Sabine Wilke/CARE.

Magdala St Ange, a member of CARE Haiti’s emergency response team, explains cholera prevention to a group of children and distributes soap. CARE’s team also provides hygiene and sanitation training to prevent the spread of cholera. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE.

CARE provided advice and assistance to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and distributed safe delivery kits and newborn kits. Image: Sabine Wilke/CARE.

- A baby is vaccinated at one of the women’s centres supported by CARE in Leogane. Image: CARE.

Micheline Jean-Claude, 23, is a latrine attendant for CARE at Camp Pactiti. She receives 200 Gourdes per day (around $5) and is responsible for maintaining the latrines and hand washing stations. CARE provides Micheline with brooms, masks, gloves and detergent to keep the latrines clean. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE.

Masseleine Dorwilus, a 34-year-old mother of five outside of her temporary shelter provided by CARE. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE.

 Donate to CARE’s Haiti earthquake appeal.

Two years after the devastating earthquake in Haiti which killed over 222,000 people, CARE is helping communities to move from the recovery phase and work towards rebuilding their lives and regaining their independence.

Léogâne was one of the areas hardest hit by Haiti’s devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010. Officials estimate the tremor destroyed 80 to 90 per cent of Léogâne’s buildings, including many schools.

A young girl outside a destroyed building in Leogane in the days after the earthquake in 2012. Image: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

The parents of Léogâne’s Mellier community have a long history of banding together to help one another. In the chaos that enveloped Haiti following the departure of the ruling Duvalier family in 1987, a group of parents in Mellier formed the Association of Parents of Mellier (ASPAM), a PTA-like association to make sure their kids’ schooling continued without interruption. Soon after, they opened a pre-school and an elementary school so their youngest children didn’t have to walk for hours to facilities outside Mellier if they wanted an education.

Even in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, when day-to-day survival was itself in doubt for many, parents began work to get their children back in school. For help, ASPAM turned to CARE, which has supported 78 schools since the earthquake, 20 in Léogâne alone.

‘CARE was with us from the start,’ says Ginette Louis Jean, director of the ASPAM pre-school. ‘CARE provided us with school kits for teachers, students and educational materials for the class.’

An ASPAM school in Leogane where CARE has assited with refurnishing and has distributed school kits to students and teaching materials to teachers. Image: Mildrede Beliard/CARE.

The parents soon re-opened the school in a temporary structure. CARE provided classroom supplies such as benches, blackboards and recreation kits and built latrines, hand wash stations, water purification systems and held regular hygiene promotion sessions. The community pays an attendant to clean the latrines and ensures that the hand wash system is always filled with chlorinated water.

CARE’s work with the school goes beyond standard educational curriculum. A CARE-led program in the school teaches children how to make attractive handbags from discarded items like bottle labels and cigarette packs. The kids earn money selling the items at a local market. Though the program includes boys and girls, it was designed in part to teach income-generating skills to at-risk girls who might otherwise turn to prostitution.

CARE's Education program is developing activities on self-esteem for vulnerable students in elementary schools affected by the earthquake. They are learning arts and crafts and will be able to earn money if they can no longer go to school .Image: Guy Mokia/CARE.

CARE also provided members of the school’s community with psycho-social counselling to help them cope with the intense trauma of the earthquake and its aftermath.

‘The psychosocial sessions have helped us realise that we didn’t only need to rebuild our houses, but also our minds,’ explains Ginette. After some understandably difficult months, she says the school’s 250 students, 138 girls and 112 boys, are much happier now.

Despite the extreme challenges created by the earthquake, ASPAM believes it’s a stronger organisation now than it was before the earthquake. With 80 per cent of its students passing Haiti’s standardised tests, ASPAM acquired land to build a secondary school so its graduates have a place to continue their education as they grow.

‘We hope CARE can help us expand the school,’ says Lesly Jean-Baptiste, chairman of ASPAM. ‘But even if it can’t, CARE helped us become much stronger. I’m sure we will find a way.’

Find out more about CARE’s work in Haiti or donate to CARE’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

When Serina learnt about the benefits of having a toilet in her home, nothing could stop her from getting to work and building it herself.

Serina is a mother of eight and member of a community health club facilitated by CARE in southern Zimbabwe. The area has very low access to sanitation, so CARE began working through the clubs to teach hygiene and sanitation principles and improve access to toilets.

Serina outside her home in southern Zimbabwe. Image: Josh Estey/CARE.

‘I’m very happy to be a club member,’ Serina explains. ‘I have learnt how to keep my house clean inside and out and how to avoid the spread of diseases in our community. Now I feel happy that I can teach these things to my children.’ In a country that suffered from a severe cholera outbreak in 2009 which claimed 4,000 lives, the importance of hygiene and sanitation cannot be overstated.

The toilet in Serina’s home is a brand new addition, built using the knowledge she gained from CARE. She explains, ‘Before we had a toilet we just used the bush – we dug holes and then covered them up afterwards.  After joining the health club I learnt how important it was to have a toilet, and how to build a temporary toilet myself.’

Serina's 18-year old son Lawrence walks to the toilet and tip-tap, a home-made hand washing device. Image: Josh Estey/CARE.

Serina and her husband got to work digging the pit for the new toilet. After a few days, they found that the job was too hard for them. Not to be discouraged, they sold three chickens and 20kg of homegrown groundnuts to pay for local labour to help them complete the task.

Next, she set to work constructing bricks. ‘I started moulding the bricks with my 15-year old son.  It took me one and a half weeks to make bricks for the construction,’ she says.

The final step in turning Serina’s hard work into the finished product was hiring a local CARE-trained builder to construct the toilet. Her family’s first toilet was completed by the tradesman, whose skills were not previously available in her community.

Serina is appreciative of the opportunity CARE’s health club has provided for its members, who are predominantly women.

‘I can see in the households that women are the ones that care for their families, so it’s important that we are learning to live in a healthy environment. After I have gained all these skills my family is practicing good hygiene. We always remind each other to keep ourselves clean.  I hope I will learn even more in the health club sessions.’

Serina with her husband Mahara in front of their new toilet. Image: Josh Estey/CARE.

Serina’s husband, Mahara, is proud of his wife’s hard work and the improvements she has made in their home.

‘Since she has been a health club member, there has been a considerable change in our home. I appreciate that she gets information from the club, and that we can work together to make improvements,’ he says.

You can help famlies access toilets in their homes by donating to CARE’s Give Water for Life appeal.

Following more than two weeks of intense negotiations, the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa ended on 11 December 2011.

In the conference’s closing hours, parties agreed on an outcome that for the first time will force all of the world’s biggest polluters to take action to reduce the impacts of climate change.  Currently this is no more than a mandate to work towards a legally binding plan to cut emissions, to come into force by 2020.  Meanwhile, the Kyoto Protocol will enter a second commitment period to run from 2013-2020, and progress was made on a Green Climate Fund that will support developing countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

Zambia © Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

However, evidence is growing that this could be too little, too late, to avoid catastrophic interference with the climate system and warming in excess of 3-4 degrees Celsius.  This would have a devastating impact on vulnerable communities and ecosystems, particularly poor women and children who have contributed least to climate change, but will be the hardest hit.

CARE sees a glimmer of hope in this pathway towards a long-term legally binding climate agreement for all greenhouse gas emitters, but the devil will be in the detail.  Developed countries will need to commit to deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and honor commitments to direct up to $98 billion a year to developing countries through the Green Climate Fund by 2020; a significant challenge against the backdrop of economic uncertainty in the US and some EU nations.

I’ve recently come back from a trip to the Delta region of Vietnam and I am hopeful. Through dedicated local partners and funding from donors like AusAID, CARE is reaching the most vulnerable communities with development assistance.

Thanh and his family come to mind. Thanh is 26, with a bright face. He has what could be described as cerebral palsy but this has not been medically confirmed. Working through local Women’s Union and Commune People’s Committee members, CARE has been providing crucial water, sanitation and hygiene support to vulnerable households that lie scattered across the Delta, many areas that are now inundated by floodwaters. This included building an indoor toilet for Thanh, who has limited mobility.

An indoor toilet provided by CARE has made life easier for Thanh, who has has limited mobility. Photo: Christina Munzer/CARE

Up until three years ago, Thanh and his family were using the river to go to the toilet. This was incredibly difficult and at times humiliating for Thanh, who often required assistance from his mum or dad. As visitors to their home, we had difficulty disembarking from a small boat onto a muddy embankment to access their porch, our shoes clogged with mud. I found it hard to imagine what it must have been like to crawl across this same embankment, clothes all wet and muddy, just to go to the toilet.

Thanh’s mother said that during construction of the indoor toilet, the local technician worked with the family to ensure that Thanh was able to access the toilet on his own while also maintaining hygiene. Through translation provided by Hien, the Project Manager, I asked Thanh how he felt now that he had an indoor toilet. He replied that he is very happy to be able to do things on his own and keep clean.

Thanh with Hien, the project manager who oversaw the construction of the indoor toilet. Photo: Christina Munzer/CARE

And so I felt some satisfaction that we had at least started to appreciate the barriers that people like Thanh face, but recognised that there is so much more that we can do.

Before I left Vietnam, I gave a short presentation to a few CARE staff in Hanoi on Disability Inclusive Development and one of the last slides was a picture of Thanh and Hien. There was a gasp of surprise and familiarity. I explained that CARE was already reaching people with disabilities and we had a unique opportunity through dedicated local partners to do more for people like Thanh – to equip outreach workers with information on people with disabilities, their rights and entitlements and available services, and more importantly, to improve how we document the vulnerable households we reach to more effectively communicate and advocate to others about their needs and opportunities.

Wouldn’t it be great if the next time I visited Thanh, he was going to school?

Sylvester Pokona is just 38 years old, but has the life experience of a man much older. A survivor of the Bougainville crisis – the civil war which gripped Bougainville in Papua New Guinea from 1988 to 1990, all the events of his life since then have been impacted by the conflict, including his status as a person living with HIV.

Since finding out his HIV positive status, Sylvester has become a leader and advocate for persons living with HIV in his community

When the crisis overtook Bougainville, Sylvester joined the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) and was separated from his wife and children. The conflict, which began over a dispute between local landowners and mining company Rio Tinto, tore apart many families in the region as men left their villages to fight, were imprisoned, and sometimes killed.

“During the crisis families got separated. Some marriages were broken because maybe the husband or wife might be from a different part of PNG, and then, if you weren’t from Bougainville you had to leave. When those people went away, or those people stayed back, the father or the mother was separated from the rest of the family,” explains Sylvester.

Sylvester’s family suffered this same fate, with the conflict driving him apart from his family. “I was married, I have kids, two daughters, and most of the time during the crisis I was traveling to the Solomon Islands and …I was leaving my wife and my two kids, so what happened, because of the problems, we got separated.”

“And when we got separated I went away with a troubled mind…I thought that I’m going to find a peaceful life somewhere with somebody else, but instead I got infected,” says Sylvester.

Though Sylvester only confirmed his HIV status in 2010, he believes he contracted the disease in 2002. For eight years Sylvester had no confirmation of his HIV status, and was also not receiving any antiretroviral treatment, which left him vulnerable to entering the full blown AIDS stage.

“When I first got sick in 2003, my weight was 72 [kilograms], so I lost eight kilos. The other two times I got sick…I was admitted to hospital…this was where actually the doctor diagnosed me and he told me to get an HIV test,” says Sylvester.

Sylvester Pokona, 38, is a survivor of the Bougainville crisis – the civil war which gripped the island from 1988 to 1990.

Sylvester is just one of the many people affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Papua New Guinea. In 2009, over 34,100 people were reported to be living with HIV. High risk behaviors within the country are fuelling the epidemic including low condom use, people having multiple sexual partners, and low rates of HIV/AIDS education and awareness.

Since finding out his HIV positive status, Sylvester has become an impressive leader and advocate for persons living with HIV in his community, and is a member of Bougainville Friends, an HIV/AIDS network supported by CARE.

“The aim of Bougainville Friends is to network with all the Persons living with HIV in Bougainville, and to fight discrimination,” says Sylvester. As part of CARE’s support, Sylvester has received training in leadership, project planning, and HIV/AIDS which he uses on a daily basis to help educate the community and strengthen the Bougainville Friends network. This includes working with CARE’s KTA Youth Peer Educator program which is educating young adults in HIV/AIDS awareness, and also peer education techniques, public speaking, and leadership.

Since publicly declaring his HIV status on World Aids Day, the 1st of December, in 2010, Sylvester has spoken to hundreds of Bougainvillians, particularly youth who are more vulnerable to contracting the disease, about the risks and realities of HIV, and also provided support for others living with HIV. Strong and healthy now he is taking anti-retrovirals, Sylvester has big plans for Bougainville Friends, and for himself.

“My wish is for Bougainville Friends to become a national body…with sustainable projects. From what I have learned from working with CARE, I am somebody now. I have learned a lot from them and I hope that I will continue to work with them, we will work together… to help prevent the spread of HIV.”

Train a woman in legal rights for $45.

One very important step towards gender equality, is training women in legal rights to give them the resources and knowledge so they can voice their concerns and priorities and create a brighter future for their family, community and even their entire country.

CARE also works with women to ensure that they have an opportunity to enter into the work force if they wish, by training as an apprentice or starting a small business. If you purchase one of these CAREgifts, you are contributing to empowering women and giving them a voice and an important place in their community.

Find out more about CARE’s work helping women to lead in their communities or browse CAREgifts.

Since returning from a brief trip to Ethiopia earlier this month, I have had the words of one woman I met repeating in my mind:

Women here used to be like material – just for looking at.  I am so happy that someone would come and listen to my story. Please share it with everyone you meet.

That woman is 44-year old Asha Ame. Asha has eight children. She and her husband live with their large family in West Hararrghe, a region of Ethiopia routinely devastated by drought.

Asha is a member of a CARE community savings group. The group of 20 members contributes 10 birr each month (around 50 cents) until they have saved enough for members to start taking loans for income-generating activities. The loan is then paid back with interest, ready for someone else to start a new venture.

These activities help to diversify income supply, so families are not so vulnerable to drought and poor harvests. They also provide an opportunity for women to earn an income, often for the first time.

Asha herself took a loan to buy a goat, which provides her family with nutritious milk and has now had kids. She then took another loan to cover her transport costs to sell crops at the local market. She quickly paid back the loan and pocketed the additional profits as the first income she had ever earned.

Asha Ame in her home in West Harrarghe, Ethiopia. Image: Josh Estey/CARE

Then, one month ago, her new financial security provided the greatest gift she could imagine – it saved her daughter’s life.

When Asha’s daughter entered her seventh hour of labour in extreme pain, Asha knew that something was wrong. She went to her savings group and asked for an emergency loan of 200 birr ($11.70) so she could take her daughter to a nearby health clinic. The group agreed and helped Asha transport her daughter to seek emergency help. At the health clinic, she gave birth to her seventh child – a healthy baby boy.

Overjoyed with the help they received from the clinic, Asha’s daughter called the baby Hakiro – which means ‘doctor’ in the local language of Amharic.

The doctor warned that if they hadn’t come to seek help, even if they had waited one more hour, both mother and baby would have died.

In Asha’s mind, it was the support of her savings group that saved her daughter and grandson’s lives. She told me:

Before, if I was in that situation, I would have had to take a very high interest loan from someone who had money. It would have taken more time and it may not have even been approved. But now I am free from that burden because I can loan from the group, and I was able to save my daughter’s life.

CARE also promotes discussions within the group about issues affecting women’s health such as early marriage and large family sizes. In Ethiopia, the median age of marriage for a girl is just 15 years of age, and the average family size is three children. But many women like Asha and her daughter have upwards of seven or eight children, which places their health and their child’s health at risk. Asha has now learnt that planning and spacing children can help the women in her community to improve their situation.

Community savings groups also discuss issues that affect women like early marriage and family size. Image: Josh Estey/CARE.

My daughter now has 7 children, I have told her not to have any more. I have learnt that the number of children in your family can make you suffer more economic problems. I now participate in community conversations and discuss the problem of early marriage in this area. I encourage parents to send their daughters to school rather than encouraging them to marry early.   

This is Asha’s story: a mother, grandmother, savings group member and a leader who is changing the income status, health and rights of women in her community.

I am happy to share it with everyone I meet.

Learn more about CARE’s work in Ehtiopia.