Perspective

Ethiopia: Supporting Orphans, Minus the Cookie Cutters

2012-01-13T02:49:00.000-08:00

People who participate in our Building Family Ties program understand this, but those who are unfamiliar with our work with Ethiopian orphans might not realize just how unique our approach with every young person’s is. That means our support for children and young adults has to be customized in every instance. Although we work with orphans, there is no orphanage where we house our kids and dole out standardized care — although we in no way disparage the practice of caring for children in institutional settings. However, we’ve found that supporting children to live with their families (if extended family members are willing) or otherwise be a more integrated part of the community is a good way to go. It honours the individual, rather than imposing a cookie-cutter model of care.

Helen is a good example of how we do this. Here is her story:

“My name is Helen. I am 16 years old and living in the Gotera area of Addis Ababa. I am one of 7 children. We had been living off the pension of our retired father, but since my mother was an asthmatic she was not able to support us and medical care for her was expensive. Though our living standards were very low, my parents were happy. To increase the family’s income, my father started working as a guard in one organization. However, after some time my father became ill with Tuberculosis. When the case became serious, he was admitted at Zewditu Hospital. Shortly after, he passed away.

“So as not to be a burden on our family, four of my brothers married. My brother who remained at home was forced to put his education on hold because the tuition fees were too high. When my mother’s asthma became worse, I too dropped out of school to care for her. After being hospitalized for quite some time, she passed away.

It was at that time that a [HOPE] employee introduced me to the organization. When I shared my story with them, the organization was very willing to support me. Like a mother and a father, [they] supported me to continue my education [by giving me] the necessary school materials. The organization also has been providing me wheat, oil, and [medicine] monthly. With the support of the Almighty God and [HOPE], I am studying the 11th grade. If it is God’s will, I want to support children who have lost parents like myself to complete their education.”

So our support for Helen amounts to practical assistance in terms of schooling, food, and medicine, so that she can keep living — as much as possible — a normal life, which for her means continuing to be, principally, a 11th grade student. We don’t institutionalize her — we find out how to help her make her dreams come true. We don’t want Helen to be an ‘orphan’; we want her to be a success, on her own terms.

Philippines - Ensuring that the homeless do not remain helpless

2012-01-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

In the early morning hours, while people were sleeping, the Cagayan, Agus, and Madulong rivers in Mindanao, swollen by typhoon Washi’s torrential rains, breached their banks.

Within minutes, massive flows of debris-filled water from the rivers raged through villages and towns, submerging or sweeping away everything in their path.

Many families didn’t stand a chance and were killed as they slept or awoke amidst the roar of the water. In one place, an entire village was swept away in just minutes, killing hundreds of people.

Our partners in Mindanao tell us that the destruction is on a scale beyond anything they’ve ever seen. In one small area alone, on the outskirts of flood-ravaged Cagayon de Oro, we’ve identified hundreds of families who remain in desperate need. And there are hundreds, in fact, thousands more just like them.

Help us ensure that families left homeless by the disaster do not remain helpless.

Michael Paull: 12,000 Kilometres, Beginning in January

2011-12-30T02:14:00.000-08:00

As the holidays wind down and we do our best to metabolize the excess food that this season foists upon us — without too much complaining on our part, we have to admit — we are thinking about our wonderful friend Michael, who is about to work off his eggnog in a big way.

In January, Edmonton entrepreneur Michael Paull, is going to begin an epic bicycle trip from Cairo to Cape Town in order to raise money for clean water in Ethiopia through HOPE International Development Agency. Michael has already raised a lot of money, and is set to raise much more through this 12,000 kilometer trip which he has dubbed H20pia.

Michael has a lively and fascinating website that is worth checking out: http://www.h2opia.ca/about/. The blog he keeps is particularly funny and well informed, just like Michael himself. His entry from July 22, 2011 details the practical concerns that such a journey raises, and gives a sense of how epic the experience will actually be:

“These four elements are the biggest areas of concern for me on this ride. If even one fails, it could be very uncomfortable four months.

Nutrition
I need to digest 2,500 of calories a day to maintain my weight. I burn 750 calories per hour while riding. My average ride will be between four and eight hours per day, which means I have to take in between 5,500 to 8,500 of calories a day.

Condition
I go to spin class four or five times a week, I swim once in awhile, I run around the block once or twice, and I ride outside on my bike for about 500 km a week. Does that prepare me enough? Let's hope so; when I am in Namibia I have a five-day ride that is 825 km.

Hydration
When you ride outside, you don't realize how much water you lose since it dries up from the sun and the wind. In the Sudan, temperatures will be in the 40s. In Alberta, 28 degrees works up quite a sweat, so this could be very interesting. Getting enough liquids and cooling my body down will be the most important factors for me if I want to complete the ride.

Recovery
After four to eight hours of pedaling a bike, I'll finally get to relax. But first, I'll have to set up a tent and unpack my gear. There are the sand storms, the rainy season, and just the everyday exhaustion to contend with as well. Stretching is important if I want to get back on the bike tomorrow and do it all over again.”

Please keep Michael in your thoughts and do check out his website or Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/mikesh2opia.

Maybe he’ll inspire you to do something on the incredible side in 2012.

Children turn online play into real world change!

2011-12-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

Club Penguin / Disney Online Coins For Change and HOPE International Development Agency are working together to help families in the Philippines.

Club Penguin's Coins For Change is designed to inspire, encourage, and enable kids to make a positive difference in the lives of families around the world. Players can direct their virtual donations to provide medical help, build safe places and protect the earth.

By encouraging children to play in Club Penguin's snow-covered virtual world, you are making a difference for families in the Philippines.

Visit Club Penguin today and play Coins For Change.

Pakistan: A delicate rebalancing between men and women

2011-12-16T05:11:00.000-08:00

Helping poor women to gain some control in their lives is an experience that never fails to encourage us. We’ve found that a kind of delicate rebalancing often happens in families that start working their way out of poverty. This is because all members are needed to make the kind of profound changes that will lift a family into a permanently higher standard of living.

While inequality is the rule in many communities where we work, and traditions that keep women powerless lay heavily on the family, change is possible. It happens without our ‘forcing’ it to happen. Take Muhammed Riaz as an example.

Muhammed belongs to a Syed (high caste) family in the small village of Basti Bhoi Sayyal, Pakistan, and lives with his wife, Musarat Bibi and their young son.

The majority of people in Basti Bhoi Sayyal are poor farmers with small landholdings. Many villagers work for others in the village and in surrounding villages and own no land. The village – and the larger area it is a part of – has no school and no health facilities. The people of the village were badly affected by the floods that ravaged Pakistan in the summer of 2010.

We recently started a project to help villagers in Basti Bhoi Sayyal and other nearby villages to regain what they lost in the flooding, providing livestock, training, and trauma counseling to the most vulnerable families. At the same time, we are mobilizing villagers to take an active role in finding solutions to the problems of their communities which include cultural and social norms that leave women and girls discriminated against and in positions of vulnerability.

When the project started, Muhammed joined in the planning and discussion sessions that were done to assess the needs of his village. However, he did not want to join the Village Flood Response Committee that was formed in the village, and also initially refused to allow Musarat to join this committee, despite the fact that she wanted to, because culturally and historically the women in his caste are not supposed to leave the house without their husbands or fathers. However, following additional discussions with local project staff, Muhammed agreed to attend several training sessions with Musarat. During these training sessions, Muhammed, Musarat, and others from their village talked about the need for a school in their community. With help from local project staff, they formed a plan to start a home school that would be headed by Musarat – the only person in the village with an undergraduate degree. With support and encouragement from his fellow villagers, Muhammed was convinced that this was an important and positive initiative, and agreed to help it happen.

Helping the poorest of the poor to help themselves sets many things into motion - new ideas, new habits, new values. Muhammed and Musarat are only one example. Oftentimes, defeating poverty means defeating oppression, discrimination, and inequality. A woman given honour, being asked to contribute the tremendous gifts within her - this is one of the many faces of victory in the war against poverty.

South Sudan: The end of starvation is the beginning of peace

2011-12-12T03:57:00.000-08:00

Check out the latest Time Magazine for an excellent editorial on famine in the Sudan and the urgent, strategic need for continued famine aid.

It makes the argument that we frequently make. Because South Sudanese communities suffer continued instability due to the abuse of militias dispatched from North Sudan and not in spite of it, we must continue to aid the victims of violence and man-made starvation.

Many people broach the notion of people caught in complex and violent scenarios with a sad, perhaps even teary-eyed unwillingness to engage. The reasoning: helping people who 'can't' be peaceful is a waste of your money. You may as well pour your aid down the drain.

We experience this line of thinking not infrequently. Consider the (justly huge) outpouring of aid to Haiti after the earthquake of 2008, compared to the relatively more tepid response to famine victims of war-torn Somalia. The spectre of war casts a cold shadow on our capacity to be generous.

As the Time Magazine article expresses so well, starving people is a weapon of war. If we allow people in these situations to go hungry, we play right into the strategy of the aggressors and oppressors. In fact, giving well-administered aid can go a long way to fighting for the cause of peace.

Even if you set aside the argument that all human suffering is equal and should be addressed with equal fervour, you can still feel justified in aiding those caught up in war. Where there is clean water, sufficient food, education, and opportunity to work, there is peace. By giving, you aren't casting pearls to any proverbial swines -- you are actually becoming a peace-maker.

Sub-Saharan Africa: The Insane Cost of Dirty Water and Poor Sanitation

2011-12-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) oftentimes feel like nothing more than an exercise in measuring just how far short the United Nation’s member states can fall from their intentions.

The organization Water Aid recently released a report stating that it will take two centuries for sub-Saharan Africa to meet the MDG to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Apparently, water and sanitation are a lot less sexy than sectors like education, and many governments are more inclined to spend money on erecting schools than toilets. We get that — but it’s disappointing.

We, as a organization devoted to helping the world’s most neglected people as efficiently and effectively as possible, know that clean water and sanitation is the ground zero of overcoming poverty. There is no other initiative that can immediately and dramatically improve the standard of living for people — it truly opens the door to every other kind of positive change.

It’s not rocket science. A lack of clean water and sanitation costs sub-Saharan Africa 5% of its Gross Domestic Product every year. Nearly 90% of cases of diarrhea are related to dirty water and a lack of sanitation facilities, and diarrhea is the number-one killer of children.

A refusal to invest in water and sanitation is a profound failure indeed. In fact, “inadequate [water and sanitation] services cost sub-Saharan Africa more than the whole continent receives in development aid - US$47.6 billion in 2009 - according to WaterAid [report] ”

We want to give the kind of aid that decreases the need for aid! Easily accessible, abundant clean water, toilets, and washing facilities will allow people to move forward with their lives. This is the kind of investment that makes people richer, healthier, and stronger. And even if the politicians don’t feel the same way, we feel extremely proud to stand with villagers who are running their clean water taps for the first time. They and we know just how monumental that moment is.

South Sudan: The Families of Abiyeh Persevere with ‘Commitment and Seriousness’

2011-11-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

The South Sudanese families that fled the village of Abiyeh this past summer approached our staff without anything but the clothes they were wearing. The violence between Northern and Southern forces that forced them from their homes had traumatized them, and they were hungry and extremely afraid. We appealed to our friends for help and we’re happy to be able to report that the families are doing much better.

Shortly after taking stock of the situation — 2,800 people in an utterly terrible situation—we received the means to help them. We gave out food, farming tools, and seeds to plant so that they could immediately reestablish a semblance of self-reliance. They gratitude they communicated is very hard to relay. What would you say if you believed you would die and then strangers from across the world paid for you to eat and farm again, keeping your children alive?

We will leave you with the words of the chief. His response reminds us of why it is all too easy to want to help the Sudanese people. They are not victims; they are survivors:

“Please pass our sincere greetings and thanks to the people who thought of us, who pray for us and support us like they did today in this camp. We are extremely happy for those generous hands. I am going to encourage our people here in the camp to come together and work hard so that we can have enough food at home for consumption this year and have a surplus of food to sell. Our children didn’t have access to school this year because we were unable to raise the money to pay for their school fees. Thanks be to God because we have the seeds and tools now — but we still need commitment and seriousness!”

HIV/AIDS: New Strategies — for the government and you too

2011-11-17T21:07:00.000-08:00

Considering how monumental and devastating the impact of HIV/AIDS — particularly in the developing world — has been allowed to be, we feel cautiously optimistic about the US government’s recent announcement of a new strategy to “creating an AIDS-free generation.”

Normally, we would receive such statements the same way we would those of an overly confident ten year old announcing her intention to run for president — polite smiles all around — but it seems that this time, the Americans intend to put some well-researched policies into play.

The new approach is three-pronged: ‘eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV, scaling up male circumcision procedures and expanding early treatment for people living with HIV and AIDS – offered a combination prevention strategy that would help reach the goal of having virtually no child born with HIV within three years.’ If these initiatives can be properly funded, they stand a chance of making a real impact.

For our part, we continue to focus on the devastation left behind by generations who weren’t helped very effectively. There is still an epidemic of orphans in Africa, and they need to be given a chance to succeed, despite facing the worst odds handed out to a human at this stage of history.

For people living in the greater Vancouver area and the Lower Mainland, we are hosting a film night devoted to the 2 million orphans now living in Ethiopia at the Heritage Grill at 447 Columbia St. in New Westminster on Saturday, November 27th. It will be a good opportunity to become part of the solution. As always, regardless of what governments deign to do for the poorest and most vulnerable people, we are quite clear in what we are able to do.

Gifts of hope that will last well beyond Christmas

2011-11-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

This year’s HOPE International Development Agency Gifts Of Hope catalogue is full of extraordinary gifts that have the power to lift people up out of the poverty and suffering that has held them captive for generations.

When you think of the gifts on your list this year, what store-bought gift can compare with rescuing orphaned children, who through no fault of their own are forced to fend for themselves on the streets and back alleys of Addis Ababa?

What gift here at home can compare with nurturing and educating young children in rural Cambodia or the Philippines? Especially when you consider that none of these children would ever be able to attend school, but for your gift.

Think of the joy you will feel when you sit down for Christmas dinner this year knowing that you have provided clean water or nutritious food for families who currently gather their drinking water from stagnant ponds frequented by animals, and scavenge the forests or garbage of others in search of a meager meal.

Imagine the relief a young vulnerable girl in the Philippines, abandoned and forced into prostitution, will feel when she receives news that your gift has arrived and she will be rescued from a life on the streets.

Each gift in this year’s Gifts of Hope catalogue has been carefully considered and represent areas where your help is most needed this season.

Whichever gifts you choose, you can rest assured that you have transformed lives, not just for today, but for generations to come! These gifts do not stop giving.

Give as many gifts as you wish. You can even give gifts on behalf of friends or loved ones and we’ll send them a note telling them about the gift and the giver.

View our Gifts of Hope Christmas Catalogue

Fighting Hunger Right: IFPRI Findings and Your Donation

2011-10-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

If you are in the businesses of caring about the world’s poorest people, you know that they have entered into a new and very scary phase of allocating more and more of their wages towards buying food.

We’ve talk about the food crisis often. High food prices are something the wealthy grumble about; for the poor they translate into actual hunger pangs and undernourished bodies.

A report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reiterates a lot of what we already know. The food crisis is caused by “growing demand for biofuels, extreme weather and climate change, and increased financial activity through commodity futures markets…These challenges are exacerbated by historically low levels of grain reserves, export markets for staple commodities that are highly concentrated in a few countries, and lack of timely, accurate information on food production, stock levels, and price forecasting, which can lead to overreaction by policymakers and soaring prices.”

While Asian countries have taken great strides in lowering the incidences of malnourished people since 1990, Africa remains a place where people struggle to get enough to eat. However, one nation, Ghana, has lowered its ‘Hunger Index score’ (meaning it has become a place where more people get enough to eat and fewer children are malnourished die before the age of five).

How did Ghanaians do it? The IFPRI attributes it to “a combination of investments in agriculture, rural development, education, and health, including strong increases in the rate of immunization against common childhood diseases.”

This particular finding is encouraging to us, and should be to you. Think about it. Your donations constitute precisely these kinds of investments. Your donations mean that agriculture, rural development, education, and health are being bolstered in small villages across the world where hunger is a serious problem. Where governments might be failing to make these kinds of investments, you, as a compassionate and active friend of the poor, are stepping in. You are getting the job done. Even if you do it more slowly than a national government with the political will to make good policy decisions could, you are doing it. You are on the right track.

Our feeling has always been that we shouldn’t wait for any government to take care of what we are ready and able to accomplish. When we read reports like the IFPRI’s, we can be encouraged - and hopefully even more motivated - to stay the course of solving the problem of hunger by making the right kind of investments.

Honduras: The Underreported ‘Poor Volunteer’

2011-10-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

In the remote village of Jamalteca, Honduras, 20-year old Honduran Annly Couvas volunteers her time to run a village pharmacy. For the past year, every day, people have been coming to see her, complaining of various problems: headaches, fevers, diarrhea, coughs, and fatigue. She treats them when she can, and refers them to the closest clinic when she can't. Though she's not a doctor or a nurse, Annly has learned to diagnose basic health issues thanks to training she has received from us and can now recognize the symptoms of all common illnesses in her community.

Now ask yourself, do you know many 20 year olds who would do this?

Annly is part of the reason why we are driven to help the poor. The fact is, the poor are driven to help each other—to a humbling extent. Any work we do to fight poverty is multiplied by the work the poor do themselves to change their situations and those of their neighbours. The amount of work they are willing to do—not just for themselves or their own children, but for their whole communities—makes our investment of money and effort seem quaint, and that’s the truth.

Without Annly’s pharmacy, the 700 people who live in Jamalteca would have no access to basic medicines. They would have to travel several kilometers by foot, and pay exorbitant prices to buy medicines from the closest main town. Annly's pharmacy is open 24 hours a day, and she charges only what it costs her to get the medicines and transport them back to her village; this money is then used to buy more medicines. Her neighbours are so grateful for the service Annly provides that, when she started, they pooled their resources to give her about $100 of seed money to buy the first medicines. In addition to running the pharmacy, Annly works with other health volunteers in her community to monitor pregnancies and track the weight of children under two; child malnutrition has, as a result, decreased significantly in Jamalteca.

Annly likes the work and likes helping the community. She's deservedly proud of the difference she is making in people's lives. Annly is only one of over 100 volunteers that run similar community pharmacies in central Honduras, and is one of over 400 health volunteers currently working with us to improve the health of children, women, and men in extremely poor villages. We support them by sending needed medicines (antibiotics, pain killers, anti-inflammatories, antihistamines, cough syrups, vitamins) that would otherwise be unavailable in remote rural communities.

Volunteerism by the poor is a big reason why your donated dollar goes as far as it does. What happens in Honduras happens in every country in which we work, in some way or another, whether it’s brigades of Ethiopian volunteers building roads by hand or Swazi women donating their time to mother HIV/AIDS orphans in their villages. It’s a big reason why we feel absolutely comfortable asking for money in the name of the poor. People like Annly prove to us constantly that this work is not a case of giving hand-outs to passive victims. The fact is that Annly works much harder with the dollar I give to her than I did to earn it in the first place. If that’s the case—and it is—then why on earth would it be difficult for me to part with this dollar?

The Dominican Republic : The Women of Los Martinez Fight for Food and the Future

2011-09-29T04:09:00.000-07:00

The Dominican Republic is known for its resort towns and beaches, but the standard of living for its poorest people is not exactly postcard-ready.

The hardworking farming families living in the mountainous province of San Jose De Ocoa are fighting a hard battle against chronic poverty and the environmental degradation that threatens to take the little they have. Deforestation and soil loss is a tremendous problem here. If the land is too damaged, food will not be easily grown in the future.

In addition to our ambitious efforts to reforest the land, we’re also helping farmers to grow more food than ever before and in a manner that preserves and protects their environment.

HOPE International Development Agency’s front-line workers in the fight to preserve San Jose de Ocoa’s tradition of sustainable agriculture are the women living in its poorest villages. Taking the village of Los Martinez as an example, we see how helping women to supply their communities with high-quality, abundant, organic produce is making a critical difference in the fight for long-term food security.

There are three greenhouses in Los Martinez. Excellent, large-fruited tomatoes are grown in the greenhouse pictured above.

The field pictured is located next to the greenhouse. A man works in this field while his wife works in the greenhouse. The primary goal of greenhouses such as this one is to support women to grow and sell their own produce so they can support themselves. The women work together in the greenhouses close to their homes so they are not too far from their children. Sometimes, they bring their children with them to the greenhouses while they work. In other communities, women take turns watching the children and working in the greenhouses. When women have jobs and start making their own income, they have more control over their own lives and those of their children. After they sell all the produce, they put some of their profits in the bank and distribute the rest of the money amongst themselves. Some of the money is used to buy seeds and supplies for the next planting season.

Francis, a mother of six from Los Martinez, has been working in the greenhouses with HOPE International Development Agency for the past 11 years. Through her work she has received training on how to be more organized and how to work effectively in a group. When asked how her life has changed since she started working in the greenhouse, she said that her life is dramatically better. Her activities are organized and within her control and she feels that she is a contributing member of society who can help her community. After the women started earning an income and HOPE International Development Agency continued supporting more community projects in Los Martinez, they were able to install benches in the schoolhouse, their houses were in better condition, they had irrigation systems and because of an aqueduct and a hydroelectric system, they now have 24-hour electricity and internet access – which is more reliable than in the province’s capital city!

The Poor and Food: The Future is Certainly Not Friendly

2011-09-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, while not being everybody’s cup of tea ideologically speaking, did publish an extremely interesting post with a very clear graphic about the effect of bank speculation on food prices. It is worth taking a look at the post.

It highlights the little known role that banks have had in causing the dramatic rises in food prices that have hurt the global poor so deeply in the past few years. It’s really astonishing to consider the facts.

44 million people have been driven into poverty since the food crisis began in 2010.

People in poor households typically spend about 70% of their income on food. In five years, speculation on food prices has doubled.

In a nutshell, banks are speculating on ‘food futures’, thereby distorting the markets and causing food prices to rise dramatically.

Farmers enter into ‘futures contracts’ that allow them to sell their future crops at a guaranteed price; banks buy and sell these contracts in the hopes of making huge profits (which they do); and speculators bet on rising prices, which cause prices to actually rise, since food buyers and sellers take their pricing cues from the futures market. It’s a little confusing, as the business of making money in the highly abstract world of high finance usually is. However, the effects are clear and they are devastating.

Is there anything we can do? Aside from express our opinion about these practices in our political forums, we at HOPE International Development Agency feel that investing into the ability of the poor to grow their own food sustainably is always a smart measure. In this climate of oppressively expensive basic commodities, it seems local food security has never been more important.

Afghanistan and 100 Mile House: Good Neighbours

2011-09-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

In our work with the poor, one of the most gratifying things we are ever a part of is helping communities across the planet to strike up friendships. There’s no better example of this phenomenon than the relationship enjoyed between the families of Jeloucha, Afghanistan, and our friends in 100 Mile House, in the Cariboo region of BC.

Esmat Nazaryar, our Director of HOPE Afghanistan, was visiting Canada a few years ago and had occasion to meet the folks at 100 Mile House’s United Church. They promptly fell in love with Esmat, an individual who, despite successfully immigrating to Canada, was driven to return to his hometown and help the people there to make a break with poverty.

When Esmat approached us for help back in the 90s, he was working at Ikea and had nothing but a huge vision. Over the years, the people of 100 Mile House have banded together to fund major developments in Jeloucha and Esmat has proven himself to be a rock-solid, shrewd, and effective leader.

The email below was written by Jack Witty, one of the individuals responsible for spearheading much of 100 Mile House’s mobilization for the poor of Afghanistan. Reading his account of a recent visit by Esmat and his family to 100 Mile House, you get the sense of the history between these far-flung communities, and the inspiring changes that their friendship has fostered.

“Esmat Nazaryar, his wife Nadera, four children, sister Atiffa and husband Yusuf and their child, along with Esmat’s brother Hyack, visited 100 Mile House in September to convey the thanks of the community of Jeloucha to all the people of the South Cariboo who have supported the rebuilding of Jeloucha over the past 8 years.

New work in area will consist of developing storage facilities and grain banks in four communities; developing a forest nursery in Jeloucha to begin the reforestation of the area, and the extension of the road we helped build three years ago for better access to some of the more remote fields.

In the meantime, the school has progressed to the point where only the painting and finishing touches are left to do. The Afghan government will be supporting the school as of the new school year in March 2012. The community has set aside space for farmers from the district to meet and assist each other in how and what they do to expand their crops and earning possibilities.

Esmat is now trying to convince the leadership to set aside space for women of the community to have their meeting place.

Esmat explained that the area is dealing with some of the more extremes of climate change. In the time of his Grandfather, this area of Afghanistan was covered by lush forest with abundant wildlife, including tigers and other Asian animals. Now that climate zone has moved northward, Jeloucha is a semi-arid, almost treeless part of the foothills of the Hindu-Kush Mountains.

Reforestation with local tree species, particularly pistachio trees for a cash crop and fruit trees for both food and sale will, they hope, bring back some of the lost moisture and moderate the overall climate. This past summer, people finishing the roof of the school were working in 42 degree heat! As I am one of those contributors to excess carbon, I will be a lot more thoughtful and careful with my own emissions from now on. […]

Esmat returns to Afghanistan September 15. When I next hear from him I will get out another up-date.”

Thank you, 100 Mile House people for all of your compassion, activism, and neighborliness - it’s amazing to find a community whose concept of ‘neighbour’ can extend so far geographically and culturally!

Nourishing Hungry Minds

2011-09-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Poverty can just as readily starve the mind as the body. And when children’s minds are undernourished – due to a severe lack of educational opportunities – the long-term consequences can be devastating, even deadly.

In poor communities throughout Cambodia, northern Afghanistan, and the Philippines, it is entirely possible that children’s bodies can be reasonably well nourished, while their minds remain severely undernourished.

Education helps children see themselves and their surroundings in a different light and encourages them to create solutions, rather than simply accept poverty as their lot in life.

HOPE International Development Agency is working with families and communities to provide educational opportunities that will ensure children and their families do not remain trapped in poverty.

Learn more about efforts to provide educational opportunities for children in Cambodia, northern Afghanistan, and the Philippines by visiting www.hope-international.com today.

Africa: The PlayPump Rolls Out, Then Runs Out

2011-09-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

PBS’s Frontline recently broadcasted a story about Africa, clean water, and the troubling nature of high-octane, advertising-driven ‘entrepreneurial’ charity that we think is worth sharing.

In this story, Amy Costello chronicles the rise and fall of the ‘PlayPump’, a water system that doubles as a merry-go-round, a device that would harness the energy of children at play and replace the old hand-pumps that predominate in Africa.

A seemingly well-meaning entrepreneur named Trevor Field championed the device, and for a while, it captured public attention with gloriously lucrative results. PlayPump raised millions of dollars and commenced an ambitious rollout across Africa. PlayPump had particular targets it pledged to meet, and soon the devices were being installed across Africa at a breathtaking pace.

However, when Costello investigated several PlayPump sites, she found that children mostly avoided them, finding the PlayPump to be hard work, rather than fun. Many of the pumps were broken and local people could not reach anyone who could help them to replace parts. Many reported to Costello that they had never been consulted about the change and simply wanted their old pumps back.

This story is sad and frustrating on a number of levels. One thinks about all the donations that funded PlayPumps breakneck rollout. Perhaps most grievously, when people feel that their generosity is returned with inefficacy, it hurts the longterm cause of raising funds to make a real dent in poverty. People do not want to be taken for fools.

There are many lessons to be learned from the PlayPump, and we are grateful to have learned them relatively early on in our work with the poor.

Any changes to a community must be spearheaded by the community. We do not ‘do’ charity to a community. When we help a community to install clean water systems, we are doing exactly that: helping a community to do it themselves. They approach us, and we assist them to make the changes that they have identified as being important
‘Make haste slowly’. This is an old African expression, and it applies perfectly to our work with the poor. The PlayPump fiasco was a model of too much, too fast. The ‘rollout’ became more important than the effectiveness of the pumps. There was seemingly no thought given to what would happen after they were installed. In our work, educating the people to maintain their own systems is a very important priority. It takes longer to educate, but it means the work will have been worthwhile.
The ‘sexy’ solution isn’t always the best one. The PlayPump was a great story. PlayPumps are cute. Entrepreneurial campaigns that promise rapid change are very appealing. People love the idea that a new product will suddenly and substantially change the quality of life for the poor. They will believe this to the tune of millions of dollars. Sometimes technological innovations do help out the poor. But by and large, what really seems to help the poor is a harder sell: conscientious, people-driven, simple solutions paired with plenty of education.

In short, no ‘product’ can take the place of what our friends in the Philippines call ‘people power’. When we seek to help people rather than help them help themselves, we will always run into trouble. The PlayPump is only one of many frustrating examples.

Ethiopia: ‘Staying’ Power

2011-08-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

We talk a lot about what it means to stay somewhere for the long haul. ‘Staying’ is probably one of our cardinal values as an organization of people devoted to helping the poorest of the poor.

Crisis is usually what attracts the attention of westerners to the poorest places in the world. When suddenly life, for whatever reason, becomes unbearable or utterly tenuous for significant numbers of people in one place. With attention comes donations, and so many organizations are most visible when they are taking part in aiding people in crisis.

Over the long term, the crisis is resolved or it simply becomes an embedded part of life for the poor (like a war that results in various tribes mistrusting one another for decades, leading to occasional violence and a general inability to cooperate). Over the long term, people no longer pay attention. This is when we do our best work with the poor.

Ethiopia is probably the best example of this. We started our work there in a time of famine, but we’ve stayed for decades. Over time, we’ve learned how to help the poor in the most efficient and effective way, through zeroing in on the lack of clean, abundant drinking water. The longer we stay, the better able we are to serve the poor well, to maximize on the finances that caring supporters entrust us with.

We marvel at the growing expertise of our Ethiopian staff. They took a decade to bring clean water to the entire district of Dereshe, which began with only 11% of families having disease-free water—and this was a tremendous accomplishment. But consider the fact that since Dereshe’s completion, they have been working Bonke district for only two years and by this year’s end, we project that 40% of the district will be finished. Ten years ago, we were approached to bring water to an area called Gewada. The project necessitates laying 17 kilometres of pipe, which is a mammoth engineering feat. We said we couldn’t do it then. Now, we are on track to ensure that the people of Gewada are all drinking safe, nearby water.

This is the power of ‘staying’—you get better at what you do. You stand a chance to really get somewhere in the fight against poverty.

Horn of Africa: Therapeutic Food Makes the Difference for Starving Children

2011-08-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

At latest count, over 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in deadly serious need of help. Over a third of these people are in Ethiopia, where we have long worked with families to bring clean water and prosperity to their villages.

It’s an overwhelming crisis. As nearly impossible as it is for us to imagine, this huge number is made up of real mothers, fathers, little boys, little girls, and babies. To get a sense of this, picture the Ethiopian district of Alle Woreda.

Alle Woreda saw so little rain this year that their summertime harvests simply didn’t come. Life here before the drought was not easy to begin with. It’s a place where fighting between different tribes (typically over scarce resources like water, which we are working with the people to make accessible for all), has put people out of their homes. Many in Alle Woreda have been living under plastic sheets that we provided as temporary shelters during the fighting, and they have no back-up supply of food.

Now over 20,000 people in this district—and 15,000 of them children—are badly malnourished and very afraid. Their livestock are dying in droves. Malaria and typhoid are claiming many lives—normally they might be strong enough to weather an infection, but in their weakened state, they succumb easily to these diseases.

Right now we are tending to children who are living in an emergency center. These children are currently unable to eat regular food to get needed nutrients and instead need ready-to-use therapeutic food that allows the rapid weight gain that can mean the difference between life and death. They’ll need to have this special food for several months.

Believe us—and bear with us, as you may find this to be such a statement of the obvious as to be insulting—the parents of these children intensely want their children to survive. Many, many others want the same thing and they will not have their wish granted. We need to make sure there are as few parents in the second category as is humanly possible. That’s all we know.

We know that our supporters agree, but bluntly speaking, our call for help needs a bigger response. We need to do more and we can’t without help.

Ethiopia and Dawson’s Creek: McLeod Students are ‘Thinking Globally’

2011-08-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

A little earlier in the summer, a school in Dawson’s Creek, British Columbia called McLeod Elementary approached our representatives David and Teresa Plante with a desire to raise a thousand dollars for clean water projects in Ethiopia. The fact that they outdid themselves by raising $1,307.95 is pretty incredible — considering that the school has an enrollment of 39 students. They did this by selling tote bags and water bottles.

The kids were moved by what they had learned about Ethiopia through their own research as well as through a presentation conducted by Teresa and David. Teresa told them:

“The first time we went there [to Ethiopia], the children would have a lot of sores on their face and legs and distended bellies and parasites are fairly common, and when we went back that was quite a bit better. If you can see such a difference in just three months, you can just imagine what a year will bring.”

We’re excited to be working with children not even out of elementary school to save lives. It’s a huge encouragement to the people of Ethiopia who are working very hard to bring clean water, health, and prosperity into their villages. Read the whole story about McLeod students.

Crisis in Africa: Three things that we know

2011-08-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Our call to help people in the Horn of Africa who are dealing with the worst drought in 60 years continues. Many of you have already helped. We anticipate that many more of you will.

As always, when there is a crisis, we are painfully aware of two things. First, we know what the suffering is. We know about whole villages on the move, very hungry and afraid. We know there a more than 10 million people in this situation. Second, we know just how often people like you are asked to help and we know just how often we ask you to help people in crisis.

Sometimes it seems as though these record-breaking crises are becoming the norm. Will the frequency with which poor people face calamity affect your desire to help them? Will disaster become more and more acceptable to us - so long as it does not involve us directly?

The reality is, we’ve been blessed to keep helping the poor because you continue to care. We trust that you will remain open to the plight of the poor.

There is a third thing that we are very aware of: we are able to do something. Because we are able, we will do something. All we can do is invite you to join us.

Declaration of famine just the beginning as the situation in the Horn of Africa goes from bad to worse

2011-07-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

Hunger is rapidly becoming starvation in the Horn of Africa as death continues to tighten its grip on more than 10 million people trying to survive amidst the worst region-wide drought in 60 years!

The United Nations has declared that famine has arrived in the region. Setting aside the technical definition used by the UN when declaring a region to be in famine, in real terms it means that an already terrible situation is getting much worse and rapidly deteriorating.

Our life-saving efforts in the region are concentrated on identifying and helping families who have not yet received help or are unable to access aid as the crisis continues to deepen.

HOPE International Development Agency is focused on providing emergency food aid, materials, and medical aid, as well as continuing to ensure that a food crisis can be averted through agricultural support.

See how you can help today.

The Philippines: A Milestone for Indigenous Children

2011-07-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

This past spring, two of the schools that we support in the Philippines celebrated their first ever Elementary Graduation. These schools are incredibly special: they are attended by children from Indigenous Peoples’ tribes.

Indigenous Peoples (IPs) of the Philippines are so neglected and dirt-poor that they are unlikely to meet minimum caloric intake standards for six months out of every year, much less attend school.

This milestone is an exciting one. Many students received special awards for classes that demonstrate the firm footing these schools have in traditional IP culture: agriculture, dance, archery, poetry. These schools also create in-roads of vital learning in the greater community, ensuring that their rich traditions are bolstered by the skills that give the people power in wider Philippine society. Witness Ernesto Manalay, a fourth grade student who has given special honours for teaching his parents to read and write.

We were presented with a Kuglong, the Matigsalog tribe’s most well known instrument, as a token of gratitude for helping these children to realize their dreams. Friends of HOPE International Development Agency should know about the gift—without them, of course, nothing would have been possible in the first place.

South Sudan: Peace Comes from the Underground

2011-07-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

For those who have been following the story, the establishment of a peaceful post-war Sudan has been a long, uphill struggle. When we chose, a few years ago, to make South Sudan a special focus of our efforts to bring clean water and self-reliance to the poorest people in the world, we knew that complication, struggle, and adversity would be the order of the day.

While the secession of South from North Sudan certainly injects an element of instability into a context that has long been dysfunctional, none of what the Sudanese people are contending with is a surprise to us.

We know now what we have always known: the Sudanese people are trying to sort out a mountain of historical problems, and they need help if they are going to do it with peaceful outcomes.

So there continues to be areas in South Sudan where people are fighting over resources, fighting over what they believe is the destiny of their nation. There continues to be a greater community who are working hard to make peaceful, healthy villages, who simply wants to live without fear - and some of these people get hurt.

In particular, the areas of South Sudan that border the North have been experiencing attacks, and when there are victims, our standard response is not to throw up our hands at the persistence of violence, but to help the people who are hurt. These people, once assisted, can keep up the good work of making peace, of making a South Sudan a good place to live.

After all, that’s our job—to simply help. We always try to be clear about that.

Many of you are aware of our latest appeal to help victims of recent violence in the borderlands and perhaps you have chosen to help us care for the people affected. If so, you should know just how beautifully and well our friends in South Sudan are going to use your gift to help people. It is our job to help, purely and simply, but it certainly encourages us to do all we can when we see how hard the Sudanese people work to respond compassionately and intelligently to these incidents.

Earlier this year, when people had to flee from a village called Bahamani that was attacked by Northern Sudanese militias, we were very moved by the way in which local people from surrounding communities volunteered to help with our emergency response. In so many places, the distribution of aid can become an ugly thing, with disorganized aid workers unsuccessfully managing crowds of desperate and violent victims. We have none of this in South Sudan. Our friends here form volunteer committees that count the families correctly, distribute the food, shelter materials, and medicines properly and peacefully, and even go the extra mile to ensure that households that are headed by widows or who have disabled family members get priority status on the distribution lists. These local volunteers make it beyond easy to help those who need it badly.

The South Sudan we know is committed to peace. There is a whole nation within this troubled nation that is more devoted than ever to health, safety, and self-reliance. We will always help this South Sudan.

Cambodia: Khmer Rouge on Trial, Sort Of

2011-07-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it should come as a surprise to no one, but the complications seem endless as Cambodia continues the painful process of putting the perpetrators of one of the 20th century’s most criminal and violent regimes on trial.

No one — not even Cambodia’s famously corrupt government — can say with a straight face that no legal reckoning of the Khmer Rouge should take place. But it seems that while publicly endorsing these complex, internationally prominent trials, the powers that be still feel comfortable undermining them in every way possible.

So far one prison commandant named Comerade Duch has been sentenced to thirty years in prison and four more former high-ranking leaders of the Khmer Rouge are on trial. A rather small tranche of a movement that was responsible for the deaths of 17 million Cambodians in the late 70s.

But when further trials have been proposed, Prime Minister Hun Sen himself said that ‘he would rather have the tribunal fail than see more than two trials'. He told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in October that additional cases were "not allowed."

Sadly, most of the current Cambodian government is strongly tied to the globally vilified Khmer Rouge. They have a vested interest in keeping justice at bay. As with so many places in the world, a despotic and deplorable past is never too far from the present — especially when you’re looking at the people in power.

Sudan - Escaping the violence is no guarantee of survival

2011-06-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

When violence erupted in Abyei, Sudan, as armed forces from the north clashed with forces from the south, families had only moments to escape. Most fled with just the clothes on their backs and whatever meager possessions they could carry.

Right now, 2,500 families are living in makeshift encampments near the neighboring towns of Turalei, Mayen Abun, and Wunrok – that’s 28,000 people!

Escaping the violence is no guarantee of survival in the weeks to come. In fact, the well-being and survival of these families is very much in question.

Reports from the encampments are heartbreaking. One individual, having just witnessed the conditions families are living in, sent us an urgent email stating that the “humanitarian crisis is profound”, and that with each passing day the situation becomes even more critical for the families of Abyei who have lost everything.

While some emergency aid, such as water and emergency food rations, has been provided, we still need to do more in order to ensure the survival of these families.

Learn how you can help by visiting www.hope-international.com today.

Cambodia: Luis Vuitton and the Question of Core Values

2011-06-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

Readers of high-gloss magazines will soon be treated to the sight of the comely Ms. Angelina Jolie, sans makeup, dressed in olive-drab, ‘in a swamp with a £7,000 bag,’ as the Guardian puts it. The photograph, featured in Luis Vuitton’s so-called ‘Core Values’ Campaign, was taken in — for us — familiar environs. The lush landscape setting off Jolie’s moody blue eyes belongs, in fact, to Cambodia, specifically to Siem Reap, the well-touristed area north of Pursat, where we work with some of the poorest families in the world.

Vuitton’s ‘Core Values’ campaign is, as far as one can gather, somehow about promoting extremely expensive handbags while assuring consumers that said bags are naturally associated with the brand of ethos evoked by celebrities like Jolie and Bono. Which are — philanthropy? Advocacy? A not entirely cursory read of the ‘Core Values’ website leads us to believe that the advertising campaign is basically just…an advertising campaign, presumably so that people will buy more bags. There were allusions to Al Gore’s Climate project, so perhaps Gore’s environmental advocacy organization will see a few bucks come its way?

As groundbreaking as Angelina Jolie without mascara may seem, we’d like to gently suggest that a demonstration of your ‘core values’ might not cost as much as a Louis Vuitton bag. Or perhaps it might.

In Cambodia, where the ad was shot, we can provide a clean water well that would serve a few families for around $1,000. So for the cost of this $11,000 bag, you could basically provide a small village with water for life.

In a corporate milieu where brands are constantly trying to humanize themselves by associating with ideas, cultures, and personalities that fit only very marginally and awkwardly with the actual, raw products they are hawking, it’s not a bad idea to keep your wits about you. Any sane person will tell you that a village without dysentery, cholera, and the preventable death of children is more valuable—to its core—than a monogram spangled piece of leather.

Across Canada: Running for Water, Saving Lives Here and Abroad

2011-06-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

This past month was a busy one for athletes intent on saving lives - across the world, in the rural villages of Ethiopia, and in one instance, right in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

We have to give our thanks and kudos to the volunteer organizers of Abbotsford’s Run for Water and Halton, Ontario’s Run for Wells.

Both events were smashing successes, with the former raising over $200,000 and the latter over $45,000.

All proceeds will go to helping families in Ethiopia to construct and manage clean water systems, learn basic health and sanitation practices, and begin a steady ascent out of the worst poverty imaginable. It is no exaggeration to say that the runners and walkers who participated saved and transformed thousands of lives. By all accounts, they had fun doing it too.

Fortunately, thanks to the “the quick actions of local schoolteacher and Run for Water board member Claire Apostolopolous”, who performed immediate CPR on a volunteer who collapsed before the races, the Abbotsford event was not marred by what could have been a major tragedy. You can read the whole story at the Abbotsford Times.

We should mention that runners in Calgary are training for their own Run for Water, scheduled for September 10th. Again, proceeds will go to clean water in Ethiopia. For more information, go to www.runforwater.ca.

So there is a lot to be thankful for, to put it mildly. Families in Ethiopia are celebrating along with all the organizers, volunteers, and runners who made these events such successful ones for the cause of universal clean water.

Clean water - the beginning of the end of poverty for families in rural Ethiopia and southern Sudan

2011-06-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

Water, something we often take for granted here at home, is claiming lives in Ethiopia and southern Sudan.

It would be a relatively rare event for someone here to worry about the quality of the water that flows from their taps. But in rural Ethiopia and southern Sudan there are few taps, and water – especially clean water – is even scarcer.

Right now, families in Ethiopia and southern Sudan are drinking water teeming with parasites and disease. The seriousness of the situation is illustrated by the heartbreaking fact that one in five children in Ethiopia and southern Sudan dies before the age of five because of unsafe drinking water.

Imagine gathering your drinking water from stagnant ponds and muddy stream beds, both of which are used by animals for drinking and bathing. This troubling situation is reality for thousands of families throughout rural Ethiopia and southern Sudan.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. With your help, lives can be saved and the suffering can be stopped.

Learn about how you can help bring clean water to families today by visiting www.hope-international.com.

Philippines: No Lost Causes

2011-05-25T03:57:00.000-07:00

It’s a very hard read, but the Interpress Services website has a short but incisive article about child prostitution in the Philippines that we recommend reading.

This industry is truly nauseating. Trying to imagine what could possibly be done for victims like 13-year old Sharon is an exercise in being overwhelmed. This article itself does not draw conclusions on this score. In fact the experts the author consults are divided in their opinions. Some believe that only pre-emptive measures offer hope — that is, eradicating the sex trade before children are ensnared, because children who work in the trade long enough are, effectively, lost causes.

We can’t subscribe to the view these children are lost causes. Our mandate — ‘extending compassion to the neglected poor’, the neediest of the needy — compels us to aid victims of the sex trade.

Since August 2010, we’ve worked with our wonderful colleagues in the Philippines to provide affected children with better ways of earning income if they can’t live with their families. Most of them fled bad situations, and it’s no solution for them to go back. Depending on their interest, the girls can learn how to cook, make accessories, or practice cosmetology. This is just the start. These are children who need therapy, education, a solid sense that people are looking out for them.

You can help us to do all of this. If you believe that these children shouldn’t be considered lost causes, let them know by helping them today.

Guatemala: One Village Celebrates, One Anticipates

2011-05-20T12:32:00.001-07:00

Recently, the rural Mayan community of Rijuyup in Guatemala held a two-day celebration of the completion of a HOPE International Development Agency-supported community water supply project. Prior to this happy occasion, the 500 households that constitute this village were without clean water. Now it is piped directly to their homes.

Women prepare traditional Mayan tortillas for the celebration.

Jorge Luis Castro León (left) warmly greets a friend in Rijuyup on the celebration day.

Nearby Rijuyup is the village of Chinanton. Here, there is no cause for celebration as of yet. Chinanton’s water source, an unprotected spring, dries up for several months a year. Before this water disappears each year, women begin queuing at 5 am and must wait many hours in the heat. Once there is no more water at this source women are forced to walk a couple hours one way to a stream where they collect dirty water. Juana San Amparas (pictured in blue and pink below) – a widow with several children – spoke to us passionately about this hardship. The burden of collecting water has been compounded for many women in Chinanton who are making do without a spouse as a result of systematic violence that devastated the community in the 1980s.

The people of Chinanton are both extremely eager and organized in their effort to develop a clean water system. There is clean spring water in the adjacent hills that can be capped and brought to the community, but this costs much more than the community has so they are requesting help. HOPE International Development Agency, of course, is there for the families of Chinanton. Wherever there are motivated poor communities, our work finds very promising conditions for transformation. Hopefully their celebration is not long in coming.

Ethiopia: ‘I cannot be quiet about it.’

2011-05-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

We have a lot of reasons to celebrate the clean water systems that we’ve been able to help Ethiopian villages to create. But one of the changes that clean water brings is particularly close to our hearts: the tremendous and undeniably positive impact that it has for women.

This impact was clear to behold on a recent visit with Ethiopian families who have had their water systems for a while. As is the norm, families in the village of Deshkille totally operate and maintain their system in accordance with community standards that they create and enforce through committees that include both male and female members. One of these committee members, a Mrs. Abebech, shared with us that ‘When I was chosen to serve as one of the health and sanitation committee members, I was unsure because I never spoke in public before about anything. But with the training and information received, I am now able to speak in my house, in the village and to anyone that I meet. It is not about being shy anymore; I have information that is saving and changing lives. I cannot be quiet about it.’

We also spoke with Mr. Abebech about his wife’s community involvement. We were, we must admit, surprised — pleasantly — but his unambiguously positive take on what must have been a dramatic change in his wife’s demeanor. ‘I am surprised,’ he said, ‘and impressed at how she is now thinking about everything that we do in this house. It is not only about herself changing, my whole family is changing because of her, and that is a good thing.’

Indeed, Mrs. Abebech told us that she visits about 80 homes a month to share the knowledge she has gained about health and sanitation. She especially relishes helping other women to understand and take charge of their own reproductive health. A man could never do what she does. She is able to broach delicate topics and create an environment of safety and trust with the women through whom the health and function of the whole family flows. The impact that Mrs. Abebech is having should not be underestimated — Mr. Abebech certainly doesn’t.

Solving the problem of chronic hunger in rural Cambodia

2011-04-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

Food and hope are in short supply in rural Cambodia these days. Impoverished families, held captive by a particularly oppressive form of poverty, are unable to grow enough food to sustain themselves.

Forced to scavenge for food scraps and eat roots, leaves, and a nutrient depleted mixture of rice and water, families are chronically malnourished.

HOPE International Development Agency is providing a solution to hunger among Cambodia’s poorest families by helping them transform the soil beneath their feet into gardens of hope that produce a bountiful harvest of nutritious vegetables throughout the year.

You can help us bring health and happiness to families in rural Cambodia. Learn more by visiting www.hope-international.com today.

India: Clean Water and the Benefits of Flexibility

2011-04-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

It’s probably fair to say that our work with Ethiopian families has distinguished HOPE International Development Agency as an organization devoted to the issue of clean water. But while we deal mainly in protecting springs in Ethiopia, that doesn’t mean our methods look the same elsewhere. Where a lack of potable water might be a (frankly astonishingly) common problem in developing world communities, we don’t claim there is one single solution, one single model for delivering clean water to families in need. Among the other hard lessons we have learned over the years: it never pays to be inflexible.

In India, we’re proud to report that we have had great success providing ‘biosand filters’ to both urban and farming families in Madurai. Biosand filters are a relatively simple technology; in fact, versions of it have been used for centuries. Skipping over a great deal of technical detail, the filters basically work by straining water slowly through layers of sand and gravel, removing 90-95% of contaminants like bacteria, viruses, and worms.

Even simple technologies, ones that work with local conditions and cultures, need to be fully accepted by the poor in order to be useful. Just ask Mr. Nagrendran.

Mr. Nagendran lives in a township where the system supplied by the government is not maintained properly and people are regularly sickened by the water. He took it upon himself to organize a community group to research the problem and brainstorm solutions. We connected with them, and supplied biosand filters after they confirmed that the technology would work best.

Mr. Nagendran, of course, received a filter for his own home. But it took his wife some time to warm up to the new addition. She thought it took up too much space and wasn’t totally sold on its benefits, despite her husband’s activism. (Imagine how charmed by her stance he must have been!) After a while, although she wouldn’t drink the water, she succumbed to using some of it to cook rice. To her surprise, the rice turned out whiter and tastier than it had ever been. When she saw that it lasted for many more hours without spoiling than was normal, she finally came around. Now the entire family uses the filter and everyone is quick to sing its praises. So perhaps at this point Mrs. Nagendran shares our view on the virtue of flexibility.

The Meaning of “Hope”

2011-04-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

On the week of our flagship gala celebrating our work with Haitian families, we’re working hard to ensure that people come away from the experience Saturday night with insight into the lives of the poor. It’s a good time to reflect on the essence of our mission.

These words, from HOPE Myamnar colleague David Tegenfeldt, are a rich reflection on the meaning of ‘hope’—both the word and the organization we are a part of:

“Commonly today, people use the term “hope” to express a wish, desire, or something they dream of. However, if we look at the Indo-European root of the word “hope” and at the Hebrew and Greek equivalents of the word “hope”, we get a somewhat different understanding of the word than how it is used in common parlance.

The Indo-European root of the word “hope” is the same root from which the word “curve” (to bend) comes from. Therefore, the root of the word “hope” gives us the connotation of a change in direction; going in a different way.

The Hebrew and Greek equivalent of our English word “hope” has the meaning of a strong and confident expectation. This meaning stands in contrast to “wishful thinking.”

Putting the Indo-European root and the Hebrew and Greek equivalent together, yields a meaning of the word “hope” as a confident expectation that a desirable change is likely to happen.

Percy Shelley, the 19th century romantic poet, in talking about “the moral imagination” said, “a man to be greatly good must imagine clearly, he must see himself and the world through the eyes of another and of many others.”

At HOPE International Development Agency, we engage in action which sparks and grows “hope” in the hearts and minds of vulnerable communities so that they can bring positive change to their lives and their futures. This positive change is both physical (i.e. reducing material poverty) and relational (i.e. transforming how individuals and communities see and relate to one another). Of equal importance is to spark the “moral imagination” in each of us – to arise out of and to go beyond our ordinary selves. Together, we can live out our hope for a better world.”

Ethiopia and Abbotsford: To Dream is a Privilege

2011-04-09T03:14:00.000-07:00

With the annual Run for Water coming up in less than two months, and an Abbotsford-based UNION team having just traveled to Ethiopia’s Bonke region, consciousness of Ethiopian families at the crossroads remains high in Abbotsford, BC.

A rather remarkable relationship has formed between this first world community and the developing world districts that are notable for having the most dreadful clean water access rates around (only around 11% in Bonke when we first started our work there). Ethiopian families working with HOPE International Development Agency have the opportunity to changes things for good in their villages. The changes are so profound they amaze even our staff in Ethiopia, who are long accustomed to seeing the poor go a long way with only a little assistance - 80% drops in disease rates, children attending school rather than spending all day searching for water, women becoming leaders in their water system maintenance committees. All developments which were unimaginable before the clean water came.

The potential for transformation in Ethiopia is inspiring the people of Abbotsford. Since the Run for Water started up three years ago, a groundswell of support for clean water in Ethiopia has been growing in British Columbia’s fifth largest city. The Run for Water is a powerfully uniting event, and more than a one-day event, it’s a movement for advocacy and education. Their work in spreading knowledge of the situation of Ethiopian families is particularly prominent in Abbotsford’s school system.

An entire volunteer team was assembled from Yale Secondary School. They traveled to Bonke last month and brought back incredible stories and insights. Local media outlets have also chronicled their trip extensively - an indicator of just how much interest there is in this issue. The stories are worth reading.

Before their trip, they were featured on CTV News, and in the Abbotsford Times. Since their return, they were in the newspaper again.

In the words of one student, “I have hundreds and thousands of hopes and dreams. It is a part of life in Canada. I didn't know it was a privilege and a gift to have hopes and dreams.” These are words that cut to the quick. She is right. It is encouraging to see so many people use their capacity to dream to raise the standard of living for chronically poor families. This is exactly what Abbotsford’s relationship with Bonke district represents.

Writing a new chapter in the life story of the world's most marginalized children

2011-04-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

If the early years of an orphaned child’s life were set before you in a book, without a doubt it would be a difficult read.

As each chapter unfolded, your descent into the oppressive world of poverty would leave you more and more desperate for relief. And as the book draws to a close, you might even have to put it down as you approach the inevitable moment when poverty claims yet another child.

There can be a completely different ending however. One that is full of hope, happiness, and health for orphaned children in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Swaziland.

If compassionate people whose gift at birth is something just shy of limitless opportunity, share with children whose birthright is anything but, a new chapter can be written in the life story of some of the world’s poorest, most marginalized children.

The new chapter includes a safe place to live, education, nutritious food, medical care, dental care, and counseling to help heal the emotional trauma of losing parents or being abandoned. For teens, their new chapter also includes vocational training that will ensure they can earn a sustainable living as they enter the workforce.

Learn more about what HOPE International Development Agency is doing to help these children and how you can help.

Japan and Overseas: Suffering as Common Denominator

2011-03-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Like everybody else, we are riveted by what is happening in Japan. It’s too much to imagine: the shock of losing so many lives—whole communities—to successive disasters and the specter of meltdown at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant heightening the stress of recovery to what must be an unbearable level.

Our office in Japan, always busy with devoted volunteers, has been besieged by calls for advice and assistance. We are doing our best to be a part of a compassionate and coordinative network in and outside of the country. These activities take place on top of full time work on behalf of the poorest families in the world.

Our mandate is to assist the poorest of the poor. You could make the argument that the type of chronic poverty we are tackling with families in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, is an ongoing disaster. It’s one that unfolds so constantly that it fails to draw much, if any, attention to itself. We are charged to keep paying attention to—responding to—a disaster that doesn’t occupy much space in the public consciousness.

It’s totally inappropriate to compare the experience of suffering based on context. The fact that Japan has the third largest economy in the world makes not one iota of difference to the people of Sendai, many of whom lost friends and family members. Whether you lost a child in Ethiopia because you don’t have clean water to drink or because a tsunami swept her away, you are in exquisite pain.

So we don’t say that the Japanese people are somehow less deserving of compassion because their economy is wealthier and their infrastructure stronger to withstand these disastrous events. What we say is that suffering is universal, and where it occurs, we must extend compassion.

Microfinance—Not a Panacea, but still Pro-Poor

2011-03-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Nobel-prize winner Muhammad Yunus’s unceremonious oust (for his allegedly improper conduct or for more political reasons) from the Grameen Bank is the latest disturbance in the world of microfinance. For our part, we’ll definitely withhold judgment on Yunus’s character or the fairness of his dismissal from the institution he founded. There is a more interesting discussion to be had.

Many have commented that this scandal is just the latest reason to be disillusioned about microfinance. Microfinance is simply the practice of lending out small, low-interest loans to people who would be too poor to qualify for loans at a typical commercial bank, people who would otherwise be targeted by the loan sharks who would drive them into miserable debt. This was the simple, but effective, concept behind Yunus’s Grameen Bank, which claims to have helped over 10 million families to cross the poverty threshold (currently defined as living on less than $1.25 a day). In its early days, microfinance was hailed as a brilliant development in poverty eradication, a panacea to the problem of families across the world who simply could not seem to get ahead.

As with every ‘miracle cure’, there was inevitable backlash. The truth is, the practitioners of microfinance aren’t uniformly saintly. As microlending institutions became more common, they also became more commercialized, motivated by the profits they might earn if they became more aggressive in their lending and collection methods. Some families defaulted, and in some cases were driven to suicide by the debts they incurred.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but HOPE International Development Agency follows a non-profit model for lending small loans to the poor. We also maintain that loans are not always enough - access to credit needs to be accompanied by training and social support. $40 might be enough to help a Cambodian woman to start a business. But $40 plus a course in accounting plus a small group of friends to meet with about the challenges she faces would probably be enough to help her maintain a profitable, viable business.

So while the backlash carries on, we’ll be perfecting our approach to financing the ventures of poor women on the verge of changing the quality of their children’s lives for good. What is the lesson we take from the controversies associated with microcredit these days? A good idea could always become a great idea. We feel loans for the poor are good - but loans with support for the poor are far better.

Cambodia: Development is in the Details

2011-03-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

When we talk about ‘development’, we often slip into well-meaning but very vague language. We hear talk about ‘empowerment’ and ‘aid’ and ‘sustainability’. One pictures a kind of iridescent moral net thrown over the world’s various ills. It doesn’t exactly zero in on what we—you with us—are trying to accomplish.

There’s a simple way of looking at it. We’re trying to help people address the things—big things to them, little things to us perhaps—that keep messing them up, keep them from having any sense of control over their lives, or the ability to improve things for their children. That is about it. That focused sense of mission takes us in a lot of different directions, it’s true; for every 100 people, after all, you probably have about 100 different kinds of problems, 100 required solutions. But the aim is the same—helping the poor to gain control over their lives.

Our health fund in Cambodia is a good example of how this all works. Pech Van is a 57-year old widow who lives in Prey Omal, Cambodia, with her mother, her daughter, her son-in-law, and her four grandchildren. Pech’s mother is disabled, and needs frequent medical care, which has placed a huge burden on Pech and her family. In the past, when Pech’s mother or any of her grandchildren were sick (which was often), Pech often couldn’t buy medicine for them or bring them to the hospital in Pursat town. The problem wasn’t that she couldn’t afford the expense; Pech has a good home garden and a chicken raising business. The problem was that her family often got sick at times when she couldn’t sell crops or chickens, which meant that she had no money with which to pay the doctors or pharmacies. Pech didn’t want to have to borrow money from a moneylender, who would have charged extremely high interest rates, and couldn’t borrow from her neighbours.

In May 2008, Pech joined one of HOPE International Development Agency’s new village health funds. Every month, Pech started paying 25 cents into the fund, along with almost 100 other families in her village; HOPE added money to this fund as well. From these pooled funds, the village health fund gives no-interest loans to fund contributors to pay for healthcare expenses.

In January 2009, Pech borrowed $40 to treat her mother for typhoid. She was able to pay this back in April, as soon as she harvested her vegetable crop. In August 2009, Pech again borrowed money from the fund - this time, she borrowed $50 to bring her young grandson, who had dengue, to the hospital. And again, Pech was able to pay back the loan within a few months with money from her home garden and chicken raising business. Since then, Pech has again borrowed and repaid money, and plans to do so in the future. With the safety net of the village health fund, Pech, her family, and her neighbours feel more secure and happier. They know that if they get sick, they now have options.

Development is in the details. It takes spending time with people to understand the obstacles they face in their lives. Pech needed a fund to draw upon in bad times. Every family has a different story, and every time that story ends well, it’s a lot more gratifying to describe than any lofty plan to ‘develop’ the so-called ‘under-developed world’.

Big orange rig a symbol of hope in southern Ethiopia

2011-02-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

Over the past twenty-five years our venerable TH-60 water well drilling rig has produced clean water for more than 60,000 people in southern Ethiopia’s rugged Awassa region.

The fact that the rig is still in operation two and a half decades after we first provided it to the people of southern Ethiopia is a testament to the determination and diligence of the Ethiopian drilling crews who transport and operate the rig.

For the people of Awassa, the bright orange rig is a symbol of hope throughout the region.

In this region of southern Ethiopia, where water-borne diseases kill one in every five children before their fifth birthday, the TH-60 drilling rig is a lifesaver!

When the rig rolls into a remote village, people know that their days of drinking dirty, parasite-infested water are over. Clean water will be theirs to drink, not just for today, but for generations to come.

Ten years have past since the last major refit of the rig and today, our Ethiopian colleagues need to refurbish the rig. When they're done, the rig will be back in the field for another ten years and is expected to drill enough water wells to bring clean water to an additional 30,000 Ethiopians!

Visit www.hope-international.com today and learn more about what clean water means to the people of southern Ethiopia, and how you can help our Ethiopian colleagues refurbish the venerable TH-60.

Toilets: The Marvelous Tool that Turns One Dollar Into Nine

2011-02-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

HOPE International Development Agency is widely recognized as an organization that works with the poorest people in the world to bring clean water to their communities. But we have a lesser-known but equally persistent passion - sanitation for the poor. Or, to put it much more frankly, toilets for everyone.

Once we start working with a community, its members decide on a set of enforced guidelines meant to manage their projects (like water systems or new school buildings) and sustain and protect their benefits (like improved health). These guidelines always include a requirement that every family should have a well-built latrine.

It is truly staggering to examine the benefits that come from toilet usage and good hygienic practice. To not place an emphasis on sanitation is to miss out on an incredibly effective way to ease the burden of poverty for a very small investment.

In fact, for every dollar that you spend on improved sanitation, you earn back about nine dollars worth of benefits.

These benefits range from 1,000 extra productive hours for every household (that would otherwise be spent lining up at a public toilet, or searching for somewhere private), to saving 12% of sub-Saharan Africa’s health budget, where typically half of their hospital beds are filled with people suffering from diarrhoeal diseases. What useless misery.

There is a fantastic fact-sheet here that outlines the incredible benefits of investing in sanitation. Reading it, we are reminded of why this is such a critical emphasis in our ongoing work with the poor. Perhaps we should talk about this topic more often. It would not bother us a bit to be associated with toilets, when you consider how much they do to protect the health and wealth of all people.

Sri Lanka - Flood victims remain in great danger

2011-02-10T07:36:00.000-08:00

Unprecedented rainfall and massive flooding in Sri Lanka over the past few weeks has left 350,000 people homeless and more than one million at risk.

The torrential rain and widespread flooding also submerged tens of thousands of hectares of rice fields, depositing tons of mud and debris on the valuable farmland. As a result, an entire season’s rice harvest – nearly 25 percent of the country’s total rice harvest – has been destroyed.

HOPE International Development Agency has been helping affected families in Sri Lanka since the flooding began, but we need your help to continue.

Food shortages, and outbreaks of water-borne diseases are among the big concerns at the moment. Homes, damaged or destroyed in the flooding, need to be rebuilt or repaired as quickly as possible otherwise displaced families will remain without shelter.

You can give today to provide urgently needed help such as emergency food, cooking utensils for displaced families, materials to repair or rebuild their homes, medical attention for the injured and sick, and assistance to mothers who are pregnant.

Learn more and give today.

Volunteers: Bridging the Gap, Having A Good Time Too

2011-02-03T10:41:00.000-08:00

While we gear up for our spring series of Film Premieres and Dinners, we must acknowledge that HOPE International Development Supporters are active all year long in advocating and raising funds for the poor.

This is always inspiring for those us of us working in the North American offices, and it goes without saying that it’s deeply encouraging to our colleagues overseas. Most of the time, they are indigenous members of the communities that they serve, and they’re invested very personally in the work they do. To know that there are people here who are working on their behalf as volunteers makes them feel that they are not alone.

So we must give kudos to Niko Kozobolidis in Vancouver, BC, who organized an event on January 20th. He and his guests helped provide the funding for a community water system in Rijuyp, Guatemala. By all accounts, the singing, dancing, storytelling, and food were all good reasons to be there.

Secondly, we know of a group of students in Calgary, AB, who are planning an Art Showcase event to raise funds for the families affected by HIV/AIDS that we support in South Africa. The Showcase is scheduled for February 5th and will include a fashion show, donated art, silent auction, live music, and refreshments. The organizers can be seen here in T-shirts that were made for the event.

Thanks to all who are working hard on behalf of the poor. HOPE International Development Agency is always ready to help with these kinds of endeavours. If you’ve ever had an inclination to take on something like this, don’t hesitate to contact us (link) for ideas and support.

UNION Opportunities: ‘Powerful, Unifying, Spectacular’

2011-01-26T15:43:00.000-08:00

We are actively recruiting members for our UNION overseas volunteer teams. There are a lot of placements this year, including a special team for families that is being dispatched to Ethiopia. See if there is an opportunity that suits you. It may be your time to make this important investment in yourself and the overseas families that HOPE International Development Agency partners with.

Why should you? Let’s allow Maya Tong, a Cambodia team veteran, to answer:

“The most significant part of the UNION trip for me was the intense focus on respecting and understanding other cultures. Just because North America is considered a first world country while parts of Cambodia are still considered to be third world, it does not mean that a North American way of thinking or problem solving will best suit the problems that another country faces. I felt that it was very important to understand that we were guests in their country, and that the primary focus was not to change the lives of the people we met, but to understand the lives of the people we met. Understanding of someone else's perspective is probably the most important part in being able to significantly help them in ways that will be sustainable and long-term.

Another part of the trip that I found very significant was the diversity of the UNION team of Canadians. Everyone is so different that we probably would not otherwise have all been friends, except for this single, powerful, unifying trip that we all took together. The unity that can result in diverse peoples with a common cause is really spectacular.”

Learn more about HOPE International Development Agency UNION teams.

Southern Sudan: Carter’s Gaffe a Subtle Reminder

2011-01-20T19:03:00.000-08:00

Last week former US President Jimmy Carter provided a sad, but perhaps darkly amusing, wrinkle in the swathe of commentary surrounding the Sudanese referendum.

In a field report for CNN Carter was discussing the issues surrounding the possible split of Africa’s largest nation, one of which is the question of how its debt load will be split between North and South. He stated that President Omar al-Bashir "said the entire debt should be assigned to north Sudan and not to the southern part of Sudan. So, in effect, Southern Sudan is starting with a clean sheet on debt. They'll have to make some arrangements for other sources of income, of course."

All of which would be great news for the South. Except that it is, unfortunately, categorically false. The Sudan News Agency released a refutation of Carter’s statements immediately.

Carter’s contributions to the world notwithstanding, the venerable statesmen looked like the very picture of baffled grandstanding. Perhaps after we and the Sudan foreign affairs folks forgive him for his tenuous interpretations of al-Bashir’s intentions, we can also use his example as a reminder of just how complex the issues are that the Sudanese people must face. They most certainly defy soundbite-making.

Haiti: The Big Story, One Year Later

2011-01-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Major media outlets like CNN are in Haiti today to report to you on what has been accomplished so far on the anniversary of the earthquake that leveled the western hemisphere’s poorest nation and inspired a worldwide outpouring of aid. So are we.

The story you are hearing on radio, television, print media, and the blogosphere is this: an enormous amount of money has been donated to Haiti; an enormous amount of money has been presumably wasted. The ‘recovery process’ is slow, disappointing, almost difficult to discern.

In fact, we knew what the story would be a year ago, when disaster struck. The pitch and volume of giving assured us that there would be disenchantment down the road. We were determined not to be a part of that. We knew that our Haitian colleagues were more than capable of ramping up their work with the poor, and we’d be foolish not to trust them with all of the largesse of our supporters.

Throughout the year, we’ve reported on our work in Haiti, which has involved aiding people in the immediate aftermath, and helping survivors to thrive, building better communities and livelihoods than the ones they lost.

For example, we’re very excited about the work we are doing to help farmers to grow more food for communities that have grown by a stunning 30% because ‘earthquake refugees’ have been taken into almost every household. Food security is one of the priorities that the Haitian government has identified in its own official plan for recovery. We’re excited to be a part of real change on that front.

From on the ground in Haiti right now, we continue to report good news. There is progress. Our involvement in Haiti doesn’t span the nation. CNN won’t be reporting on the people we know.

A team of volunteers with HOPE International Development Agency is right now traveling in Haiti, meeting with the people who you have touched with your outsized compassion. We will share their stories upon their return. There is good news.

If you are one of the many people who have questioned whether or not you were too generous when you sent whatever you could to help Haitians survive, we don’t blame you. It’s understandable, given all you’ve heard. But it’s our mission to make sure you never regret your generosity, and thanks primarily to the good Haitians we have working with us, we are right on track. Giving generously was and continues to be a good choice.

Learn more about what HOPE International Development Agency's work in Haiti.

Rescuing Children from an Epidemic of Suffering in the Philippines

2011-01-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight, a 10-year old Filipino girl will find herself forced into the arms of an abuser bent on taking advantage of her deeply impoverished situation.

As unbelievable as this tragic situation might seem, it becomes even more jarring when you take into account that more than 60,000 Filipino children are being trafficked in the sex trade right now throughout the Philippines. In fact, some estimates put the total number of trafficked children even higher, at 100,000.

This heartbreaking and horrifying situation can only be described as an epidemic of suffering.

HOPE International Development Agency has made great strides in helping families and their children free themselves from poverty throughout the Philippines, but our focus today is to rescue children that poverty claimed well before we could reach them and their families.

A gift from you of just $65 will rescue a young child from a life that is leading to destruction, and possibly, death. Your gift will provide a safe place to live, learn and heal.

The child your gift can rescue will receive an education - giving her the ability to learn her way out of poverty.

She will also receive vocation skills training that will enable her to have a skill or trade that will generate a livable wage when she grows up.

Counseling will also be available in order to help her transition to her new life.

Learn more about how you can rescue a child today.

2011 - Time to be a Hero?

2011-01-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

To begin the New Year on the right foot, how about participating in a simple imaginative exercise.

First, imagine that you are taking your morning walk, a stroll through a meadow behind your house. You are approaching a shallow pool of water, a trough that sometimes fills with rain. To your horror, you see that an infant is struggling in the pool, about to drown.
What do you do next?

You are probably wondering why I would even ask. Of course the answer is simple. You are going to lift this baby out of the water. Fine.

Next, I want you to imagine that the same baby is drowning in another pool of water, but the pool is located thousands of miles away. Perhaps you can see this happening on a television screen, or perhaps you have simply been told that it is happening by somebody reputable. Even though you can’t use your physical arms to lift up the child, you could do something just about as strenuous, like pushing a button or speaking a command, to initiate the rescue. Do you do it?

Are you doing it?

This exercise comes from a moral philosopher’s work on compassion and aid, in a 1971 essay titled “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. The philosopher famously asserted that failing to devote a greater portion of Western wealth to the cause of ending poverty was equivalent to opting out of rescuing a drowning child.

Why?

Because giving a small portion of our wealth is easy- as easy as pausing in your morning walk to rescue a child.

Because, contrary to a lot of bad press that charitable aid has received, making intelligent investments into anti-poverty solutions is effective- as effective as lifting that child out of shallow water.

If nothing else, it’s something to chew on, when you are considering how much you are willing to do for the poor this year.

South Sudan: A Happy New Year for Africa’s Undecided Nation?

2011-01-01T17:31:00.000-08:00

It’s nearly New Year’s eve, and Southern Sudanese people are celebrating while they consider what the future of their nation should be. Meanwhile, the UN is stockpiling food in case the January referendum to decide whether the Christian/animist south will separate from the largely Islam north results in violence.

It’s a tense time for Africa’s largest country. While the referendum puts into motion a shift that will either bring stability, change, violence, or progression for the nation as a whole, at the village level, South Sudanese people are struggling to establish peaceful lives.

While HOPE International Development Agency’s Sudanese colleagues have many success stories to share and their skill in bringing permanent positive changes to communities is growing they are also adept at responding to crisis - unfortunately due to much hard experience. It is not uncommon for them to need to move quickly in order to supply food, shelter, and care to people who have had to leave their villages due to attacks from unsympathetic tribes.

Decades of civil war leaves a legacy of mistrust and violence. Poverty can make neighbours turn on each other if they feel it will aid in their survival. The reality of life on the ground in South Sudan is one of great difficulty and uncertainty.

It is also one in which extraordinary people are trying to make a good life. While we can’t guarantee nation-wide stability or just political outcomes, we can invest in capable and worthy people. They will be the ones to lead their neighbours, slowly and with some difficulty, into a South Sudan that might someday mark their holidays with a little less anxiety.

UNION Volunteers: Recollections from the Dominican Republic

2010-12-18T13:59:00.000-08:00

The memories of past HOPE International Development Agency volunteers do the best job of conveying the experience of volunteering. From time to time over the coming months, we’ll share a few of these experiences.

Below, Dominican Republic 2009’s Keith Esch recounts two of his favourite experiences in Ocoa, the mountainous district where our volunteers have worked alongside poor farming families for over 25 years.

“Everyday, after a long, hard, hot, days work, we’d file back to the two-room school house in which we lived. One by one we’d shower the dirt, cement or paint off our bodies and proceed to devour that night’s dinner. Hard work in that hot heat will put a fierce hunger in you, so when I used the verb devour in the last sentence, I meant it. Seriously, I almost used the verb inhale instead.

At that point in the evening, it would be about 7:00 pm. Our stomachs were satisfied and our minds were satisfied in knowing we did something meaningful and helpful that day. Like clockwork every night, the kids from the neighboring area would come over to the school. We had tennis balls, a soccer ball, a basketball, a guitar, construction paper and markers and we’d all play until dusk. Arroyo Blanco normally only got a couple hours of electricity in a normal day, so when the light bulbs suddenly came on each night, there was always a little excitement in the air. We’d listen to Bachata music, and relaxed by reading or journaling. We’d turn in early each night, content to wake up and do it again the next day. Time went slower there."

Keith shares more of his experience...

"I love riding in the flatbeds of trucks. I absolutely love it. Even in North America, if there is a truck and a low risk of passing a police officer, you don't even need to ask where I'm going to sit. So you can imagine the sheer joy I felt upon arriving in the Dominican Republic, a country where riding in the back of trucks is an openly accepted part of life. A few of us were fortunate enough to ride in the back of the truck on the very first day. Over many hours, we drove from the airport, through the capital of Santo Domingo, into the breathtakingly beautiful interior. The panoramic view’s intensity was magnified by the wind and the sun and I remember feeling pure joy as we raced down the paved -then unpaved- roads. We road in the flatbeds of trucks numerous times throughout our six week stint, but the magical feeling of watching some of the world’s most gorgeous landscapes rush past never got old. It felt like we were flying, only if flying could be done from the comfort of a flatbed of a truck.”

If volunteering overseas is something you or someone you know have ever considered doing, check out the options for 2011.

South Sudan: A Closer Look at Clean Water Training

2010-12-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

In South Sudan, we are hard at work with families of refugees who have returned to their former homes after the end of civil war. In the long list of services that must be restored if families are going to live in stable communities, clean water is at the top.

Like with all our work, infrastructure must be accompanied by education. Our colleagues in Sudan are learning to put together wonderful training sessions that ensure that families enjoy every potential benefit that a clean water system can bring to their community.

For a closer look at what these sessions are like, see this list of questions that villagers in a small community called Wiro had for the instructor who asked them what they wanted to learn about:

How to increase water access and avoid conflict over water sources.
Discussion on sanitation around water sources
Hygiene promotion and water source management
Learn to mobilize community to create awareness on environmental hygiene
Learn and implement water protection strategies
Protecting water sources
How people and livestock can share water sources and keep water source hygienic
Water containers hygiene
Maintain water source sanitation
River and bore hole water and how to manage the two
Discuss value of clean water and how to use river water source
How to manage use of water by diverse groups of people and how to reduce conflict over water
Create awareness on use of clean water
Repair of broken borehole
Management of water source and community mobilization
Acquire knowledge and tools for repairs
How best to use new borehole.

The list is interesting in several ways...

First, it indicates the level of passion and sophisticated interest that people in Wiro feel towards their water system. It reveals how multidimensional clean water is; the questions posed touch on technical, social, environmental, and interpersonal issues.

The questions are good ones—and if they don’t get the answers, you can just begin to imagine what problems might arise. For example, if they aren’t taught to fence the ‘water point’ (where collection occurs) from livestock and the water is contaminated and then abandoned because it still makes them sick, what good would all the concrete, engineering, and labour that went into creating the system be?

When we take knowledge for granted, we do the families we work with a great disservice. HOPE International Development Agency founders like to tell an anecdote about their early efforts to bring clean water to the poorest of the poor that illustrates this point well.

In an Ethiopian village where a new system had just been installed, a HOPE International Development Agency worker offered a man a drink of clean water - the first he would have ever tasted. The man, who by all accounts was a wise and respected member of the community, categorically refused the water. When asked why, the man explained that he didn’t trust what was on offer - it had no colour at all, and he knew that’s not what water should look like.

Any ‘benefit’ has to be understood in order to be truly beneficial. That’s why we commend the hard work our friends in Southern Sudan are doing to increase knowledge among the families working with us.

From Cancun to Ethiopia: Without the will, there Is no change

2010-12-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

Details from the ongoing world climate talks in Cancun paint a picture of a tentative, quite torturous process, in which ‘the negotiations are going to be complex if there is no flexibility by the parties and no political will.’

By mid-December, we will know whether the participants have managed to work a deal out that will have enough parties making enough changes to curb emissions for the conference to have been worthwhile. Climate change is nothing if not a complex problem - difficult to understand, difficult to muster the will to respond to.

Helping the poor to transform their villages into viable communities is also nothing if not complex. As with climate change strategies, there must be sufficient ‘social will’, and everybody needs to participate if it’s going to work. If the results are not clearly understood or clearly valued, then the process is a non-starter.

These are the kind of social complexities that we take into account before we start working with a village or a group of people. It’s not enough to just plunk down a load of money, or a load of concrete, or a load of tools.

There has to be a will among community members to do what it takes, including make sacrifices. For example, in Ethiopia, people who work with us to build water systems for their villages will spend many days of very hard labour for no pay in order to clear the way for pipes.

Everybody must participate equally. When the water system is installed, people have to be willing to work on committees that will maintain the system, people have to pay their fees for repairs, et cetera, and people have to put into practice the health and sanitation training they were given, or else their health gains are nullified.

In every instance, a village will remain poor if the people living there are not truly leading the process. Money alone is no cure, just like a conference alone will not address the problems associated with climate change.

If poverty reduction were simple, it would happen quickly. But as with most wonderful, truly worthy goals, it’s more complicated than that.

Cambodia: Water Festival Disaster Illustrates

2010-11-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

Cambodia’s most important yearly celebration, the Water Festival, has been marred by an unthinkably random disaster. Celebrants crossing the bridge to Diamond Island became trapped in a crush of bodies so severe that it injured and killed hundreds.

The Calmette Hospital is the country’s best-equipped hospital and most of the 700 injured have been brought there. The situation is very grim, since the hospital does not possess facilities large or sophisticated enough to deal with such an onslaught.

Calmette’s inadequacy casts the basic struggle of the poor in stark relief. Poverty may be just barely livable - until disaster strikes. Of all the things distinguishing the ‘western’ quality of life from the ‘southern’, the ability to absorb shocks just may be the most fundamental. In bad times, there is no margin of recovery.

We believe that poor communities should be supported so that they can absorb the shocks that inevitably visit human beings.

Canada and Philippines: The Costs We Carry

2010-11-17T09:20:00.000-08:00

Staff and volunteers for HOPE International Development Agency have recently returned home from their annual cross-Canadian tour of film premieres. One of the more important and least pleasant tasks for our audio-visual volunteer is carting a heavy video projector from airport to hotel to airport to hotel, again and again and again. After the about a week of minding this particular piece of luggage, the dreariness of travel can really set in—although our volunteer appreciates the upper body conditioning that the task demands.

However, it is often these types of chores that should connect us more deeply to the families that will be directly impacted by our failure or success in securing the funds for their clean water systems.

For example, let’s consider Befesa Ligmon’s family. They live in the community of Sito Fatima, San Vicente, in a rural community of the southern Philippines. In the Philippines, children are responsible for water collection. So Befesa’s youngest children make 2 one-hour trips a day carrying a 20 litre water jug over a hilly path to an unprotected spring.

This will be an imprecise calculation, but let’s assume that the jug, when filled, weighs 20.2 kilograms, or 45 pounds. According to standard calorie counters, the act of carrying this weight for an hour would cost a one hundred pound child between 350 and 600 calories. So in one day, water collection might conservatively cost that child between 1,000 and 2,000 calories (assuming he shares the load with his sibling).

That’s a big problem. The fact is, their lives are full of laborious tasks and it is extremely unlikely that Befesa’s children are consuming even 2,000 calories a day, the average for Western children. It’s no wonder that malnutrition is so rampant among families like theirs. Their daily lives are energy-costly and food-poor.

When our volunteer finishes a day of highly unglamorous schlepping, he can and should and will have a delicious meal. When Befesa’s children return home, they’re going to be eating just to stay on the right side of starvation.

Let’s carry the luggage, raise the money needed for the water system that will save these children two hours and 2,000 calories, and then everyone can enjoy that fine balance between hard work and replenishment.

Learn about bringing clean water to the people of the Philippines.

Field Update - Tomas brings more suffering to Haiti

2010-11-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

Torrential rain and high winds announced the arrival of Tomas in Port-au-Prince earlier today.

“Tomas, a violent and potentially deadly storm, is the last thing the survivors of this year’s deadly earthquake need right now given the fragile nature of their recovery,” according to Clifferd Dick, a HOPE International Development Agency’s colleague who called from the rain drenched streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti this morning.

The bad news, according to Clifferd, is that Haitians – already near the edge of survival and living in makeshift tent and tarp cities strewn throughout Port-au-Prince – are going to be pushed even closer to the edge with the arrival of this storm.

The good news, however, is that our latest large shipment of medical supplies and medicines has arrived earlier this week and is being prepared for quick distribution. The medical supplies include items that will help in the fight against the cholera outbreak that has claimed nearly 500 lives so far.

“The medical supplies and equipment are absolutely crucial because they strengthen the capacity of local hospitals and field clinics to deal with the unprecedented and continuing demand for services,” says Clifferd. In areas surrounding some of the hospitals and clinics, the population increased by nearly 40 percent as people fled the capital in the days following the earthquake.

Building materials, distributed over the past months, have enabled survivors to construct sturdier shelters than the tarps and tents they’ve lived in since the earthquake. These people, according to Clifferd, will weather the storm much better than those who have not yet received help.

Previous container loads and airlifts of medical supplies and equipment, sent immediately after the earthquake and more recently, have played a key role in saving lives and rebuilding the health of Haitians as they continue their long journey of recovery.

HOPE International Development Agency was helping the people of Haiti well before the earthquake in January and will continue to do so long after Tomas passes this weekend.

Read an update of our efforts to help Haitians recover.

Haiti - Replacing uncertainty with the certainty of hope!

2010-11-05T06:12:00.000-07:00

One of the most devastating aspects of poverty, beyond the physical suffering and anguish, is uncertainty.

For Haitians like Janese, her husband, and their four children, the only certainty in their lives has been uncertainty.

Twice they have lost everything. In 2008, after hurricanes ravaged Haiti, Janese and her family moved to the mountainside village of Brelis and settled in on a small patch of land owned by her parents. They were starting over again and their new life in Brelis began with the building of a small hut made of mud and thatch.

Janese’s husband joined the local agricultural cooperative and gained access to training, improved varieties of crop seeds, and a network of community support. Their garden flourished, and their family grew with the arrival of two more children.

Life was better, but uncertainty was still lurking - a fact that came into sharp focus in January of this year when a killer earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince. The shock waves rumbled through Janese’s tiny mountainside community and her family’s mud and thatch hut was destroyed. Though no one was injured, they were devastated - all was lost and there would be no way to recover without some form of assistance.

HOPE International Development Agency, in addition to providing emergency supplies in the hours, weeks, and months after the January earthquake, has also been helping families like Janese’s recover from the devastation by providing the cement, wood, tin roofing, and nails survivors need in order to build shelters that protect them from the intense sun and cold rain.

In Janese’s case, her family was able to contribute additional wood, limestone, water, and labor toward their shelter project. Though it will be a while before they can build their next home, they have been able to build a frame for the house and replace the leaky thatch roof with a tin one; with a drier home, they have been less sick.

HOPE International Development Agency is also supporting the local agricultural cooperative, of which Janese’s husband is a member. This support enables the cooperative to provide families like Janese’s with extra crop seeds as well as the minimal interest agricultural credit so desperately needed by farmers who sold or ate their seed stocks in an effort to survive in the aftermath of the earthquake.

As Janese and her family continue to recover and rebuild, it’s clear that uncertainty is beginning to yield to the certain possibility that life can be much better than it has been.

Read a brief update on our efforts in Haiti.

Give yourself and others a very meaningful gift this Christmas!

2010-10-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

This year’s HOPE International Development Agency Gifts of Hope Christmas Catalog is full of gifts that will bring joy to you and the people you help!

What store-bought gift can compare with rescuing an orphan in Swaziland or Ethiopia from a life of suffering and sadness? In these two countries, even children with parents have a tough time surviving to their fifth birthday.

When you sit down for your Christmas meal this season and raise a glass of clean water, imagine the joy you’ll feel knowing a family in Sudan, Ethiopia, or Cambodia will be drinking their first glass of clean water because of your giving.

This Christmas, you can choose from a selection of gifts that will…

Rescue and care for orphaned children in Swaziland and Ethiopia.

Provide a year’s worth of wheat and melon seeds to families in northern Afghanistan, giving them the ability to grow food throughout the year. Your gift will multiply as the families set aside a portion of the harvest as seed crop for the following year’s growing season.

Give text books, schools supplies, blackboards, desks, or a sanitary latrine to a school and students in Cambodia, ensuring that children have what they need in order to learn their way out of poverty and transform their lives.

Rescue a young girl forced into prostitution on the streets of a Philippine city and give her the skills training that will enable her to start a brand new life.

Give a Cambodian family a flock of chickens or cow that will enable a them to till the soil, make fertilizer, and transport their produce to market in order to generate much needed income.

Provide urgently needed medical supplies to rural clinics serving impoverished families in Pakistan and South Sudan.

Help build a new school in Cambodia and in doing so, transform an entire community for generations to come.

Provide abundant and lasting supplies of clean water to families in Cambodia, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, and reduce the incidence rate of water-borne disease by as much as 80%!

You can give as many gifts as you wish and make this Christmas even more special and memorable for you and for a family in need.

You can also give gifts in honor of family members, friends, and colleagues. Celebrate those you care about by giving a truly meaningful gift in their honor. You’ll feel wonderful and they’ll be thrilled when they receive a special note from us letting them know about the gifts you’ve given.

These gifts will last well beyond the Christmas season, as will the joy and fulfillment you feel in having brought the spirit of Christmas giving to families who, without your gifts, would continue to suffer and perish.

Ethiopia and across Canada: A seat at HOPE International Development Agency’s dinner, if not the Security Council

2010-10-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

Canada’s surprise failure to win a seat on the United Nation’s Security Council has caused a storm of speculation.

Blame is being shared liberally, and commentators have not been shy with their theories, which range from Canada’s unpopular foreign policy decisions, to disarray in the United Nations.

Canada is like the head cheerleader who lost the homecoming queen crown, and everybody in the hallway seems to be whispering behind their hands.

Many have said that this move by the UN is, in part, a backlash against Canada’s decision to substantially decrease its aid for African nations. It was and is a highly controversial development, and it seems to have not won Canada much acclaim on the world stage.

Debate over the efficacy of big government aid programs aside, it must be said that just because its government is officially distancing itself from Africa, it does not mean that Canadians themselves have lost interested in supporting change for African people.

HOPE International Development Agency will soon be on the road, sharing with our supporters our past success and future plans in Ethiopia. Guests at our fundraising galas will constitute a growing movement of people who know what intelligent aid investment into Africa looks like. They won’t need their government to tell them what to do about it.

Cambodia: Child labour is no choice

2010-10-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

Our field staff in Cambodia (and elsewhere) regularly document the circumstances of individual families before HOPE International Development Agency is able to begin working with them. This is important to do for many - probably obvious - reasons.

In reviewing these cases, we are struck by the similarity of the problems faced by families in the most severe echelon of poverty. Possibly the most universal one is this: the futures of their children are shortchanged for present-day survival.

Take these stories as examples...

“Sompha and his wife Moeng Euth have 5 children - 3 girls, and 2 boys. They only have enough rice to eat for 5 months out of every year. They have half a hectare of land for farming. All the children stay at home and do labor for other farmers or go to the market to try to sell rice. Moeng is sick very often. Her health problems have made the family even poorer.

“Peim Moer and Ouch Seng have 8 children - 4 girls and 4 boys. They have half a hectare of land for farming, and only produce enough rice for six months of the year. All the children work in the rice fields, working for other farmers. Mostly they do hard labour like clearing land. Once, when Peim and Ouch both became very ill at the same time, they had to send one of their children to go stay in the local temple with monks, because they simply could not afford to feed all of the children.”

Perhaps this comes as no great revelation to most people, but it seems that child labour exists for no other reason but that families across the world are dreadfully poor - and a child in school means a lost source of labour or revenue. Child labour is no manifestation of parental abuse, callousness, or greed. It’s a last resort for the family as a whole.

The International Labour Organization has published an article about the issue.

Their conclusion? Eliminate poverty, eliminate child labour. Work with the parents on securing sustainable sources of income, and you will free the children to become educated.

Mindanao, the Philippines – the journey out of poverty begins with clean water

2010-09-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

In the Philippine province of Mindanao, one sip of water can mark the beginning or end of a your journey.

If you are among the poorest of the poor in Mindanao, you drink whatever water you can find, even if it comes from a dirty ditch or muddy pond teeming with bacteria. Your journey is likely to end far too soon as you fall victim to the bacteria and parasites that invade your body as a result of drinking contaminated water.

If you are among the families in Mindanao that HOPE International Development Agency has been able to help thus far, every sip of clean water takes you one step closer to being free from poverty.

The tragedy for families who do not yet have access to clean water - beyond the suffering and death caused by drinking contaminated water from ditches and ponds - is that abundant supplies of clean water flow in underground springs just meters below the surface. The families, however, are unable to access the clean water - they lack the knowledge or funds required to build a water system for their village.

HOPE International Development Agency is helping the people of Mindano construct small-scale, easy to maintain spring-fed water systems for their villages. To date, 60,000 people in 150 villages have gained access to clean water.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for families living in villages we have not yet been able to help.

You can help these families gain access to clean water and much more. Visit hope-international.com today and learn more about how you can help.

The Philippines: ‘Voices of Peace’

2010-09-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, students at the HOPE International Development Agency-sponsored Pamaulaan Center for Indigenous Education marked World Peace Day the way they best like to celebrate any and all special occasions: by holding a concert. It was dubbed ‘Voices of Peace’, and attended by several Philippine luminaries.

These students come the Indigenous tribes that have arguably suffered the most from the Philippines’ long-standing conflicts, conflicts that have killed just under 200,000 people and driven 3 million more from their homes.

The Philippines’ poorest people live in a cauldron of ethnic-and class-based violence, even while they contend with severe poverty and struggle to protect their ancestral domains from the encroachment of commercial interests like mining companies. Pressed in from all sides, the Pamaulaan students’ commitment to education, service, and peace is all the more stirring.

For a sample of the students’ singing, check out this wonderful and very collaborative rendition of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’.

Volunteering in Cambodia: When status updates about your lunch finally get old

2010-09-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

HOPE International Development Agency’s Coordinator of Volunteers has previously shared her thoughts on being overseas with poor families in this blog.

While in Cambodia, this past summer’s team did not have constant Internet access, but when they did, volunteers kept their families and friends up to date through the micro-dispatch of the Facebook status update.

With his permission, we have re-published one volunteer’s updates here:

Heading to Pursat to start our volunteer tour and live in their shoes for a few weeks!
My heart wants to explode and my face hurts ... I can't stop smiling cause I'm in LOVE with these days!
It's amazing how one water well transforms lives ... And we get to be apart of it tomorrow.
Cambodians are filling my heart with love ... One smile at a time!
Today is the greatest day I've ever known!

Rainbow comments that, ‘"Today" refers to the day we went back to visit a family we had met that was waiting for a HOPE International Development Agency water well, and the team took the initiative to buy a water filter from the market, along with 50 kg of rice, some dried fish, some pork, and salt, sugar, and soap, to bring back to the family in need.’

More than one volunteer wrote status updates about the way Cambodians smile.

Are smiles in different nations and cultures appreciably different? It’s one of the details that makes traveling—and even better, volunteering in this country so intriguing and enriching.

Poverty is so much more than the indicators we use to measure its deadly impact

2010-09-10T02:51:00.000-07:00

Rainbow Choi and the Understanding Needs In Other Nations (UNION) volunteer team has returned home safely from Cambodia. By every account, the trip was enlightening, enriching, and unforgettable.

Here are Rainbow’s thoughts on one of the most memorable families the team met - a family still waiting for a water well that will provide clean water.

“Just after meeting the family with the well from 2006 and the garden full of vegetables... and before getting to get our hands on some well-building the next day… we had a much more sobering experience of poverty and needs in Cambodia.

We met this family - Ran, and her mother. Ran has three kids. She had four kids, but one of her sons died of typhoid from drinking unclean water last year. Ran was very ill herself, which is why her mother had come back to live with her. Her husband is away most of the time, collecting firewood in the jungle to sell. She and her remaining three sons work the little land that they have to grow, and spend the rest of the day in other people’s fields to earn what little income they can to buy rice for the day and survive.

What is life like for Ran and her family?

Well, Ran herself is sick with some kind of typhoid. She suffers from anemia, from lack of iron. Her son has swelling in his legs, arms and shoulders from some kind of muscle infection that has gone untreated. They have no money for medicines much less vitamins.

She and her family eat twice a day - simple meals…just rice porridge. We met her around 11am that day. She had just come back from working in the rice fields since daybreak, about 5:30 or 6 o'clock in the morning. But she hadn't eaten yet - and her kids were still out in the field. She was about to prepare her family's meal: the rice porridge - i.e., rice boiled down with water – more water when there’s less rice. She didn't talk about eating - just about 'filling stomachs'. She showed us her drinking water – an almost-empty jar of collected rainwater. She lives too far from any river or open water source to even be able to get water from there. When she runs out, her family drinks the muddy water from the rice. At least that’s when they are lucky enough to be in the wet season. In the dry season, even the rice field water has long dried up.

There are some people, some distance away, Ran and her mother said, that have access to some water. So, when they need it, they ask if they can have some little bit. Ask might be too nice though. Beg might be more fitting. Where water is scarce, even neighbors are reluctant to share.

They had no smiles for us - not for themselves. They didn’t even look us in the eye when we were there – they were squatted down as we stood around them, eyes down at the ground as Ly talked with them about if HOPE International Development Agency was able to support them. Ly translated for us, but we caught most of it in their voices. Their voices were lifeless. They had nothing to say when we asked what they dreamed of for the future.

It was hard to stay and hard to walk away. We gave Ran’s family some loaves of bread that we had brought, and then left, very much sad, and had a quiet motorbike ride home. It was a hard day for the team. We had a team chat that night, and talked about poverty and development, as we’d seen over the last few days.

‘Poverty’ doesn’t just ‘exist’. ‘Poverty’ can be so vague it hardly has any tangible meaning anymore when we use the word. It isn’t captured by indicators of daily income, child mortality rates, poverty 'lines' and who's over or under it.

Poverty is captured in the life of a young mother whose every day existence is a struggle to survive, whose health is failing, who has lost a child, who works and toils to no end, only to fill her family’s stomachs with food that will not nourish them. It is captured in eyes that can't smile, and voices without life, two beautiful lives so desperately surviving today, that there is simply no hope, no dreams of what if? for a different tomorrow.

It is captured in real lives and real people… and it is very much real.”

Being close to medical care isn't enough for Cambodia's poorest families

2010-09-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

The live-saving hospital care your dying child urgently needs is just 30 minutes down the dirt road, but it won’t matter today. Even though a doctor can see your child, it won’t matter today. The medicines required to save your child are available, but again, it won’t matter today.

Sadly, the only thing that seems to matter today is that you are poor.

The $25 you need for the trip to the hospital, the doctor’s appointment, and the medicine, is more money than you earn in an entire month! Besides, every penny you earn is spent on surviving day-to-day.

If you were a Cambodian parent living in one of the impoverished villages we work in throughout Cambodia’s Pursat area, the tragic situation just described to you would be your heartache. Your child is dying for no other reason than the fact you are poor.

Families living in rural villages like Toul Kros, Kdei Kvao, and Roleap, need your help today.

Just like here, children get sick. But unlike here, they often don’t recover.

HOPE International Development Agency continues to respond to the needs of families and children by helping them establish Self Help Groups among the poorest families living in a village where we are working.

These groups help families learn how to protect their health, grow more food, access clean water, and start small businesses that will generate enough income to allow each family to build up a savings fund.

Families who belong to a Self Help Group are often able to pay for medical care and expenses using a portion of their savings. If their savings are not enough, they can take a low-interest loan, tailored to their needs and financial circumstances, to pay for medical expenses when they arise - it’s like having medical insurance.

We are also helping families establish Village Health Funds to assist families who are not yet members of Self Help Groups or who need emergency funds greater than the groups can offer.

Village Health Funds are like insurance policies for people who would never be able to qualify for medical insurance - they are simply too poor. When families are in need of medical care, the funds help them cover the costs by providing no-interest loans that can be paid back on a time schedule tailored to the families’ income.

Friend, these families are poor and the need is great. Every day of their lives is a struggle to survive. When parents get sick they cannot afford to leave their fields for even a few days. If they do, there will be no food on the table, perhaps even for a week.

Fathers, unable to earn income locally because they lack the training and financial support required to start and run small businesses, are forced to leave their families in order to seek day labor work along the border with Thailand – a very dangerous endeavor from which many do not return.

Widows fair even worse. Unable to earn a livable income, they struggle to care for themselves and their children - their suffering is immense and relentless.

Please visit www.hope-international.com today a learn more about how you can save lives in Cambodia.

Pakistan: ‘Worried’ Words from the Frontline

2010-08-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

Our colleagues in Pakistan are completely occupied with providing emergency aid to flood survivors. As we do our best to gather support for their efforts, to say that they are focused on the task at hand would be a great understatement. It is a stressful, chaotic situation and they enter into it with great resolve and compassion, but they do need to know that the world community is behind them.

We received this email from a good friend and colleague who is attending to the disaster victims:

Sadly, the level of disaster and destruction is so high that it is impossible to even state in words. Just to share with you that out of 40 districts…20 districts are under water. Some of these have been washed away completely and some partially but the loss is enormous.

The displacement of more than 2.2 million people [in these districts alone]; loss of property, livestock and lives still needs to [be] estimated. People are still being evacuated and there is no shelter, food and water for them. The water level is still rising in Sindh, and on top of it, it's going to be winter in the next two months. Water born diseases, skin allergies and diarrhea are on the rise and they say that 6.6 million children are feared to die. I am a very worried person at the moment. Compared to the enormity of destruction the support is very inadequate for various reasons. The international community has realized the high level of the disaster and one sees some support or commitments coming on the way but still a lot more is required.

He and others ‘on the ground’ need to focus on saving lives. If you can support them, please do.

The impact of clean water in Cambodia

2010-08-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Last year, volunteer photographer Mackenzie Sheppard documented the experience of one family in rural Cambodia who received a clean water well from HOPE International Development Agency.

His series on the Toek family (shown above) is particularly interesting because it graphically illustrates the impact that clean water can have on household food supply.

In thinking about clean water (and its absence) we often consider freedom from disease to be the greatest benefit - but the health impacts of water are much more significant than even that.

Take a look at the Toek family's harvest in both rainy and dry seasons prior to receiving a well (shown below - rainy season and dry season respectively).

Then compare that to their post-well harvest (shown below).

Five years ago, without a nearby source of protected water, they raised four baskets of vegetables a month.

Now, with a well, they have forty baskets left after feeding themselves. This is produce that they can sell. With the proceeds from their garden, they are able to afford clothing, schooling, medicine, and a whole host of other services that were unavailable to them as chronically poor people.

It's an interesting depiction of the impact that clean water can have on a family-many thanks to Mackenzie for the use of these images.

Pakistan Update - Preventing a second wave of deaths in the wake of severe flooding

2010-08-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

The flooding that devastated northwestern Pakistan this month has been called the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. It is also the world’s second worst flooding in the past decade. Over 1,600 people have been killed and more than 14 million people are affected. Now, Pakistani authorities are warning that there could be renewed flooding in the province of Sindh in the coming days.

Even as the floodwaters in Kyhber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) finally start to recede, the nightmare is not over. As they continue to wade through the pools of muddy water surrounding their emergency camps, survivors are facing a new and more deadly threat: lack of clean water to drink.

Wells, streams, and springs have been contaminated; water pipes and taps have been damaged and shut off. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Pakistan reported today that a second wave of deaths due to water-borne diseases and dehydration is imminent without an immediate response. Respiratory infections and malnutrition will also become bigger problems in the coming weeks. Deaths caused by these illnesses will greatly outnumber the deaths caused by the flood itself.

HOPE International Development Agency is responding to the imminent threat by funding the installation of water pumps in and around emergency camps in Nowshera, which has been among the districts hardest hit by the flooding. The pumps will provide safe water to thousands of people. Medicines and medical supplies to treat water-borne diseases, infections, and dehydration have already arrived in Pakistan and will continue to be replenished over the coming months.

Pakistan Update - HOPE International Development Agency emergency relief efforts expand

2010-08-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

With 14 million people now affected by massive flooding in Pakistan, the sheer scale of the disaster has eclipsed that of the three recent mega disasters combined - the 2004 tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake, and the Haiti earthquake.

Of the 14 million people affected by the deadly flooding, nearly half are in need of emergency relief assistance for their survival.

HOPE International Development Agency has been working among the poorest families of Pakistan for the past 20 years. Our experience and presence in the country enabled our emergency relief efforts to be mobilized within hours of the unprecedented flooding and destruction.

The deadly swath of raging water, mud, and debris that tore its way through villages and towns is now more than 1,000 kilometers in length. In addition to killing people, engulfing entire villages, and destroying vital infrastructure, the flooding has also left 1.5 million acres of precious agricultural land completely smothered.

HOPE International Development Agency has provided 3 large containers of medical supplies and equipment that are currently being distributed to key areas of emergency operations in five districts throughout the northwest region. Emergency health kits containing surgery equipment, antibiotics, and pain relief medications capable of supporting 10,000 people are also being distributed right now.

We are rapidly expanding our life-saving efforts to include providing flood victims with clean drinking water, personal hygiene kits, emergency food rations, tent shelters, and medical care. We are also deploying mobile health clinics that will provide medical care to survivors in more isolated areas.

Visit www.hope-international.com and help us save lives in the aftermath of this ongoing and unprecedented disaster in Pakistan.

Cambodia: On the Road with Rainbow

2010-08-07T04:43:00.000-07:00

Rainbow Choi, HOPE International Development Agency’s UNION Coordinator (and much more) recently arrived in Pursat, Cambodia, where she will welcome 2010’s summer team of volunteers. They are set to build a school that the poorest children in Cambodia’s countryside will be able to attend.

Her observations after traveling to meet some of the families that HOPE International Development Agency works with address the heart of the volunteer experience. There is nothing like being ‘overseas’ to realize one’s relative insignificance and yet total importance to the ‘bigger picture’ of poverty alleviation.

According to Rainbow:

“What I thought was amazing was that this long 2 or 3 km road for travel / dike for creating reservoirs of water for rice farming was first built by HOPE International Development Agency in the 1990s! It naturally eroded a bit, and then got significantly destroyed by some serious flooding in 1996, and had the Cambodian government along with some UN funding for repairs... but to be driving along that road for awhile that seemed to stretch on forever, seeing the water-filled farms on each side (needed for the rice paddies), and be able to get to the farmers far into the countryside... on a road made by HOPE International Development Agency... was pretty darn neat. :)

What I've been thinking most as I've been meandering through HOPE International Development Agency projects - big scale like this road, or big, to an individual family, is that, wow, I'm somehow connected to all this grand, amazing work. I don't take any credit for it... I mean, I was barely alive in the early 90s when the road was built, lol... even now, working with HOPE International Development Agency, it's not like I had anything to do with these Cambodian families' lives changing due to their new clean water filter that I just first read about in the project report 2 days ago. But somehow I'm connected to it now. It would keep rolling on without me, I also realize - I'm not an essential part at all of this picture. But, the neat thing is, that kind of I am. Or, I can be, with what I do with HOPE International Development Agency. Right now, I've just got an official "HOPE" hat on (should I be so privileged?), writing a report which really doesn't change much for the families I met today.

This simple water filter I saw today that cost $50 to build and is actually, really, saving a whole family from typhoid and other waterborne diseases? It's amazing! I had nothing to do with it! BUT- the one that doesn't yet exist that can change the lives of another whole family? I can be a part of that one. And actually so can you - anyone who cares to. You don't need to work for HOPE International Development Agency. You don't even need to come on a UNION trip (though really, you should! ;) ). Development (good development) is so much more than money... but it takes money keeps the wheels spinning. We make a lot of it. We do. A heckuvalot. What makes a life of a difference for a family here is so very small.”

Clean water brings more than health to the people of Wiro, South Sudan, it brings hope!

2010-07-30T04:26:00.000-07:00

Jessalyn Jacob and other women from her village of Wiro in South Sudan used to spend their nights far from the village, sleeping on the cold ground beside a shallow, hand-dug watering hole.

Some mornings, the women would go home empty-handed because not enough water had percolated up through the earth into the small hole. When there was enough water, it was murky and teeming with unseen but deadly parasites and disease. But Jessalyn had no choice but to bring back what ever water she could gather – the small hole in the ground was the only source of water for her family and her village of 3,000 people.

In spring of this year, HOPE International Development Agency completed a bore-hole water well in Wiro. For Jessalyn and the other women of Wiro, having access to clean water right in the village has transformed their lives. Gathering water is quicker and much safer.

“The water is clean like the water that comes in bottles”, says Jessalyn. These benefits are not surprising; this is what we expect will come from providing villages with a stable, convenient source of clean water. Thanks to the borehole, the people of Wiro will be healthier, suffering from fewer waterborne diseases like typhoid, parasites, and skin infections.

In addition to the health benefits of having clean water, there is another very important benefit of having clean water available right in the village. Families like Jessalyn’s will not have to abandon their ancestral lands where they have lived for decades. Throughout even the worst years of the war, when nearby SPLM soldiers relied on the village for labour and food, Jessalyn was committed to staying on her land, in her house, cultivating cassava, maize, and sorghum to feed her four children and eleven grandchildren. Because her father’s grave is nearby, she did not want to leave her home. But at the height of the dry season earlier in the year, Wiro’s villagers met and decided that it was time to move closer to a more reliable and abundant source of water. They did not feel that they had any other options. They made plans to relocate.

Thanks to the borehole, the people of Wiro will not have to move. Indeed, they have begun to imagine what else might be possible for their village: more water points, a school, micro-credit to build income generating businesses. Jessalyn would like to open a small shop.

Learn more about how you can help other villages in South Sudan who are in desperate need of clean water.

Sudan: Lazaro Sumbeiywo and The Power of Peace

2010-07-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

In June, HOPE International Development Agency’s International President David S. McKenzie took a small group to visit our colleagues and friends in southern Sudan.

En route to Sudan, while they waited for their visas to be processed in Nairobi, Kenya, they had the great fortune to spend an afternoon with Lazaro Sumbeiywo.

General Lazaro Sumbeiywo served as Kenya’s Special Envoy to the Sudanese peace process (1997-98) and then as mediator (2001-05). His role was instrumental to the cessation of one of Africa’s worst conflicts, a multiple-decade civil war that claimed upwards of two million lives.

Helmut Fandrich, one of HOPE International Development Agency’s delegates, recounted this meeting, among other events, in his memoir of the trip, The Power of Peace.

The former chief of the Kenyan army told us how Kenya’s then-President Daniel arap Moi had asked him to negotiate a peace in Sudan.

I was surprised to learn that Kenya’s top general started a three-day fast to get close to God before he accepted the challenge to end Africa’s longest-running civil war, an 18-year conflict between Muslim Arab northerners and mostly Christian black southerners. I was amazed how modest the General was about his accomplishments and how casually he talked about God.

In his calm, soothing voice the General talked about starting his “ventilation sessions” in 2002 with a basic question: Why are you at war? The representatives from the Khartoum government in the north, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLA) led by rebel leader John Garang in the south, were told to stay put until they came to an agreement on the basic issues that divided them.

From what I learned I concluded that the root cause of conflict in Africa’s largest country was division between Arabs and non Arabs, between Muslims and Christians. Among the big issues was how to split up Sudan’s oil wealth, as the south has huge oil reserves and the north has refineries. Also, the Christian south did not want to have Islamic law (sharia) imposed on them, and they wanted to have economic and political power. The Muslims in the north had taken the oil but had not put money back into the south, and the Christians felt powerless to do anything about it. Apparently similar feelings of marginalization also sparked the separate 2003 rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region, which led to US charges of genocide against the Sudanese government.

The ventilation sessions helped Sumbeiywo see that the conflict was about who was in control. “War,” he said, “is about power.” When Sudan’s military leader, President Omar al-Bashir, read the early draft peace proposal his raging response was for Sumbeiywo to take the draft and “go to hell.” Instead, the General went to his hotel room, sank to his knees and sought God’s will.’

I looked the General in the eye. “How was it possible that you were able to broker a peace,” I asked, “when previous peacemaking efforts had failed?”

“Both sides were tired of the conflict,” he said. Both north and south were losing sons and daughters and relatives in the conflict. “Some two million people had already died,” he added.

“What would be required for peace to come about?” I asked. “Education is the only solution to peace,” the former chief of Kenyan Intelligence said. “Unschooled people have to be educated.”

As is obvious from Helmut’s reflections, the trip was an excellent opportunity to connect on a personal level with the fine people that HOPE International Development Agency is fortunate to work with in Sudan and elsewhere. Though the material conditions there are as challenging as anywhere in the world, the people working for peace and prosperity for all of Sudan’s people are truly easy to support.

Afghanistan: A Rationale For Giving in War-Times

2010-07-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

This past week, with a few exceptions, HOPE International Development Agency’s global staff congregated in Canada for a biannual summit. During this occasion, people who are not often in the same country—let alone office building—get to connect, share stories, and most importantly, plan for the future.

Esmat Nazaryar, Director of HOPE Afghanistan, is typically an anticipated presenter despite the fact that he claims he is ‘no good’ at speaking. He works in the most isolated setting and under extraordinarily challenging circumstances. Starvation, which is arguably the hallmark of the worst kind of poverty, is a seasonal reality for his people. He works with families too poor to get through droughts—they will eat their seed stock to survive and have nothing for the next planting season.

At one point in the discussion, Esmat was asked how we should respond to people who are unsure of investing into Afghanistan’s poor. Couldn’t the war, if it continues or worsens, simply sweep away any gains for the people? Will their donations be ultimately wasted?

After expressing his very defensible opinion that the situation in Afghanistan—especially where he lives in the remote north—will not deteriorate, Esmat reminded all present why his perspective at our gatherings is so valued. He said that the reason to continue to give despite war or instability is this: when you do, you help his people, who hate war. You do not help the warlords or the politicians, or any party that makes war in his nation. By taking away your investment, you weaken those who hate war, and those who make war grow stronger by comparison.

It reminds us: peace is yet another reason to give. Even war is no excuse for neglect of the world’s poorest people.

Local Solutions to Poverty Offer the Best Hope

2010-07-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

William Easterly, speaking at the London School of Economics, argued that we do not know how to solve global poverty – but that this is a good thing.

This is an uncomfortable statement. It seems unconscionable to stare into the face of a problem that kills 35,000 children every 24 hours and say “I don’t know.”

But, as Easterly argues, scepticism and uncertainty do not have to paralyze us. Rather, they can be creative forces in their own right by forcing us to consider anew our foundational values and by moving us to consider, with optimism, creative solutions to complex problems.

The key, perhaps, is in recognizing that saying “I don’t know,” and even “we don’t know,” is not the same thing as saying “nobody knows”. We, in the developed world, may not have the answers, but people across the developing world have creative, thoughtful ideas about how best to help their own communities.

Our role then, as compassionate people with a desire to help, becomes supporting these people as they implement local solutions to local problems. This is why we at HOPE International Development Agency are grateful for our colleagues and friends in the developing world, who live with and learn with the poor in their countries every day.

Thanks to their tireless work, we do know what solutions work in Derashe, Ethiopia; in Pursat, Cambodia; in Rokon, South Sudan; and in dozens of other communities where HOPE International Development Agency works. We know that access to clean water is a crucial first step towards healthier, more productive, more self-sufficient communities. We know that education, sustainable agriculture, literacy, skills training, and micro-credit all have a role to play in providing the poor with the tools they need.

We know this because we see change happening in communities across the world.

But we also know that the constellation of needed programs is different in every country, in every community, and in every family. It is vital that each community participate in setting their own development priorities. It is vital that we listen to and learn from them. And this is, indeed, a good thing.

Rescuing Orphans in Swaziland's Malkern's Valley

2010-07-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

Nearly an entire generation of parents in Africa has fallen victim to the HIV/AIDS pandemic that continues to wreak havoc throughout the continent.

Swaziland, one of Africa’s more impoverished countries, has not escaped the devastation.

Today, it’s estimated that there are as many as 70,000 orphaned children in Swaziland, a chilling testament to the human destruction caused by the pandemic.

The most fortunate among Swaziland’s orphans find themselves in the care of their elders, most of whom can barely afford to sustain themselves given the extreme poverty within which they exist.

The least fortunate find themselves living on the streets, begging and scavenging in an effort to survive.

Either way, the suffering continues and threatens to worsen for all involved as elderly households use up the limited resources they possess and children living on the streets weaken day by day.

The people of Swaziland’s impoverished Malkern’s Valley have not been spared the suffering and heartache brought upon them by the HIV/AIDS crisis. They have done what they can for the orphaned children among them, but the enormity of the situation has overwhelmed their meager resources and the suffering, despite their best efforts, continues unabated.

HOPE International Development Agency is helping the people of Malkern’s Valley do more for orphaned children in their communities. HOPE donors are helping build Neighborhood Care Point facilities throughout Malkern's Valley that will provide shelter, care, food, and education for orphaned children.

We need your help in order to enable the people of Malkern's Valley to rescue more orphaned children and provide them with the care they so urgently need.

Learn more about how you can help. Please visit www.hope-international.com today.

The Dog Ate the United Nations’ Homework

2010-06-25T06:29:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, the United Nations published its 2010 Millennium Development Goals Report. On the whole, their assessment is written in a positive tone, and they are calculated when they broach the issue of whether or not their goal of halving global poverty by 2015 is actually - you know - achievable.

Apparently, while there is ‘progress’, every adverse development on the planet (e.g. wars, food crises, recession) makes the Millennium Development goals ‘more difficult to achieve’. Which is sort of like saying, ‘I would have had my homework done but my dog ate it’ - except in this case, the dog is a global economic meltdown.

Their best news hinges on the fact that the number of people in the world living on less than the $1.25 per day global poverty line has decreased from 46 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2005.

The question is whether or not the United Nations can really claim responsibility for this development.

If they can excuse their (and by extension, our) failure through complex global developments, can they not also explain their ‘success’ in a similar fashion? For example, doesn’t the rise of Asian economies make a slightly more convincing case for the downward trend of poverty?

HOPE International Development Agency measures its success and failure on a more modest scale than the United Nations. Where we work, there are no other organizations. There are only families, villages, and passionate individuals. They let us know whether things are getting better. They also know to whom they should attribute any progress in their lives. It’s just us, them, and - it goes without saying - you.

'Burnaby to Istanbul’: Doug’s Ride

2010-06-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

Doug Ibbott, a long time friend of HOPE International Development Agency, set out on May 8th on the journey of lifetime. He is doing what many people dream about but never execute: embarking on a modern-day adventure. While he’s at it, he’s going to help thousands of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

His objective? To ride his bicycle around the world and to raise $50,000 to help bring clean water to the district of Bonke, Ethiopia, where only 14% of people have access to protected sources.

Leg one has Doug riding across Canada, then flying to Europe where he will ride from Amsterdam to Germany. From there he will cover some 2,000 km along the Danube River to Istanbul.

The ‘Burnaby to Istanbul’ segment of the ride will take Doug until December 2010. He has been on the road for over 50 days and has already cycled to Winnipeg.

For updates please visit Doug’s blog. And of course, if you want to support Doug’s adventure for a cause, visit our website, www.hope-international.com

Ethiopia: A Closer Look at Value-Added Microcredit

2010-06-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

In recent years, microcredit has been touted as a revolutionary means for helping poor people - even as a solution for global poverty, period. Indeed, the practice of lending the poor (those unable to join commercial banks) low - or no - interest loans to start their own businesses has transformed untold lives, freeing huge numbers of people from poverty. As the effectiveness of microcredit becomes more publicized, the number of agencies offering the poor lending services increases. This is good - and it would be great if all agencies operated with the highest possible standards.

What is the best form of microcredit for the poor? We believe that loans can do much, much more if they are paired with social support. For example, this is how our Ethiopian colleagues describe the support that they offer to women who join their credit groups:

Basic Business Skill Training: Covering income generating activities, money management, marketing assessment and other skills relating to small scale business.
Literacy program: Arranged for those women who can not read and write in order to make them literate and help them to calculate basic mathematics and work effectively their business calculations.
Self esteem training: This is a training to direct the thinking of the women so that they can develop positive attitude about themselves and value them selves accordingly.
Nutrition training: This training basically focuses on the use of different food items and how to cook a healthy and nutritious food. Moreover personal hygiene/reproductive health training was also given for the ladies.

We know that these women will feel equipped to become great successes. We know that the outcomes for these women will be overwhelmingly positive. The extra support that they receive is well worth our investment. It ensures that the loan money itself will be given the best possible conditions for transforming lives.

Answering the Challenge

2010-06-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

When the challenge of poverty goes unanswered, people perish.

The enormity of poverty – 35,000 children dying every 24 hours and 1.4 billion people living on less than one dollar per day – is beyond comprehension for those of us who have never been directly confronted with carnage caused by abject poverty.

We in the developed world may struggle to comprehend, but families confronted by poverty on a daily basis certainly understand, all too well, the consequences of poverty’s challenge going unanswered.

For the people of Bonke, southern Ethiopia, the challenge has gone unanswered for generations.

Nearly 200,000 people live in Bonke, and the vast majority does not have access to clean drinking water. They know that the water they gather from filthy ponds, and hand-dug water holes frequented by animals, is dangerous. The evidence is right in front of them as they mourn the loss of yet another child killed by drinking the water.

At best, the water these families drink makes them terribly sick. At worst, it kills them. Sadly, they simply have no choice but to drink whatever water they can find – at least until now.

Today, HOPE International Development Agency is answering poverty’s challenge by helping the people of Bonke gain access, through their own efforts and the generous support of donors, to clean water. A long-term effort is underway to bring clean water to the nearly 200,000 people who live in Bonke.

With every village that gains access to clean water, the promise of a life free from poverty comes closer to being fulfilled. In Bonke, clean water is the beginning of a new era full of promise rather than suffering.

Learn more about our effort to bring clean water to the people of Bonke by visiting www.hope-international.com today.

It Is Not OK

2010-05-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

Thoughtfully considered, the plight of the world’s poorest people should be enough to make even the optimistic among us realize that our lifestyle is far from a world-wide norm.

Could we, by some act of will or necessity, screw up the courage to acknowledge that we and our lifestyle are not the norm in today’s world?

What further evidence do we require other than knowing that more than one third of the population of our world lives in abject poverty?

Could we face the stark reality described by Mother Teresa when she said, “It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”?

Is it even possible, given the attachment to our lifestyle, for us to recognize, yet alone address, our poverty?

Have we become the truly impoverished, living on a scale never before seen in history, while so many others are forced to live on scraps?

Are we saying that this is OK?

The Poor and Clean Water: When One Dollar Becomes Seven

2010-05-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

Soon, many HOPE supporters will be joining us at our cross-Canadian premieres of ‘A Thirst For Africa’, a short film that focuses on our long-term effort to provide clean water access to Ethiopia’s poorest of the poor. Clean water and sanitation is at the heart of our work with the poor. Upon investigation, it’s easy to see why.

What drives us to ensure that every child in a district drinks disease-free water is not soft-hearted sentimentality—it’s a rather hard-headed understanding of just how cost-effective and transformative this kind of initiative really is.

Consider UNICEF’s findings. Their Executive Director Carol Bellamy urges governments to invest in clean water, saying, "The money it takes to provide water and sanitation services is so small when compared to the payoffs[.]"

In fact, UNICEF said that studies show that for every $1 invested in children - including money to improve access to clean water and sanitation - $7 will be saved in the cost of long-term public services.

So when HOPE International Development Agency considers the long-term health, happiness, and prosperity of a community, we are generally on the same page as the community-members who ultimately direct our work. They say they need clean water to drink before any other anti-poverty initiative can be considered. And we agree with them. It makes excellent strategic sense.

We know that clean water means health—up to 80% reductions in deadly diseases. We know it means progress for the women in a community—as hours of their time in searching for water are spared, and girls are enabled to attend school for the first time. We know that the clear and dramatic dividends of a clean water system that a village has laboured on inspire them to go further. Clean water provides the encouragement poor villagers desperately need, if they are to continue working to elevate the prospects of their children.

There is no debate as to the value of clean water. It is a work that we feel every confidence in and it is worth every dollar that we invest in it. If you feel you want to know more, please do get in touch with us and join us at a film premiere in your city.

Freedom from hungers lies beneath their feet

2010-05-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

In rural Cambodia, you need look no further than the soil beneath your feet to be reminded of poverty’s absolute dominion over the poorest families in the country.

The soil, while capable of growing a rich variety of vegetables, remains unproductive under the footprints left by family members on their daily journey to scavenge scraps of food from the local market or forest.

The families are so poor that they cannot afford even the most basic garden tools, much less the seeds and fertilizer required to transform the soil beneath their feet into a way out of hunger and poverty.

Rather than starve, families eat concoctions void of any significant nutritional value, including boiled leaves and a watery paste of rice. The long-term effects of chronic malnutrition are especially evident among the youngest members of the families.

HOPE International Development Agency is providing a solution to hunger among Cambodia’s poorest families by helping them transform the soil beneath their feet into gardens of hope that produce a bountiful harvest of nutritious vegetables throughout the year.

In addition to receiving an armful of sturdy gardening tools, families are also given a large quantity and variety of vegetable seeds, training in how to prepare organic fertilizers from locally available materials, and health education, ensuring that the benefits of proper nutrition and sanitation are well understood and received.

Learn more about how gardens of hope are helping Cambodia’s poorest families free themselves from hunger and how you can help.

Building Family Ties in Ethiopia and Elsewhere: “There are billions of eyes in this world…”

2010-04-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

Tewabech Tano is 38 years old. She lives in Derashe district, Ethiopia, where HOPE International Development Agency recently finished delivering clean water access to nearly all of the 200,000 families living there. She is married with seven children.

She says, "We are one of the outcast and neglected community members...no one gives us attention and helps us to enhance our life in a good way. As a result of this our annual income is very little…it isn’t enough to help our survival. Though we have potential…no one trusts us to borrow to run a business. Since HOPE provided us with seed money I received a loan. With this loan I have purchased more metals to produce farming, hunting, and domestic use hand tools and buy farming land. …I gain more profit than ever before and also am able to send four of our children to school with confidence, having saved some money through our cooperatives we organized. We now have enough food, clothing, medication and education materials. I am very happy to see my life in this position through Building Family Ties (BFT) project. There are billions of eyes in this world but few are looking at the neglected…this will be a good strategy for poor people (a person like me) to come out of absolute poverty."

Building Family Ties is a program HOPE International Development Agency established so that compassionate people could invest directly in a child or entire family's future. Tewabech's account is typical of the 'good news stories' BFT supporters receive all of the time. If you ever wanted to connect more personally with a family in need, then BFT might be the right option for you.

Learn more about Building Family Ties.

Sudan: Politics and the Possibility of Change

2010-04-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last week, for the first time in 24 years, the people of Sudan went to the polls to democratically choose their government.

Despite pre-election fears, the polling was largely peaceful and voter turnout was high. Still, the electoral process was and will continue to be heavily criticized by Sudanese opposition parties, local observers, and the international community. Few seem to expect that anything will change for the millions of Sudanese who live their lives in a constant state of uncertainty and stress. A democratically elected Omar al-Bashir government will be no more accountable to the citizens of Sudan.

Hala Al-Karib, a Sudanese human and women’s rights activist, writing in the Sudan Tribune on the last day of the elections lamented that: “Various factors have transferred the elections into a meaningless process and stolen the possibilities of change.”

For the people of South Sudan, the recent election was most significant as a dress rehearsal for the in many ways more important independence referendum scheduled for January 2011. That referendum would allow the people of South Sudan to vote to become an independent nation. Yet, as the dust of the recent election settles and attention turns to 2011, some observers are already calling South Sudan a “pre-failed state”.

But to believe that change is impossible and that Sudan has failed before it even began would be a mistake. It would mean abandoning millions of people who need us to act in compassion and solidarity now more than ever.

Sudan’s nation-builders do indeed have a monumental task ahead of them. Peace has remained elusive. Basic infrastructure is virtually non-existent. The World Food Programme has warned that, due to conflict and drought, the number of people who will need food aid in 2010 has more than quadrupled: 4.3 million Sudanese will go hungry throughout the year.

These are complex and pressing problems. Until they are addressed, it is hard to see how Sudanese citizens will truly be able to write a new beginning for themselves.

Thankfully, people are tackling the problems. HOPE International Development Agency’s colleagues in South Sudan have worked against incredible pressures to keep the possibility of change alive for thousands of South Sudanese families who have survived the past decades of conflict and who persist despite unspeakable acts of brutality. They will continue to stand with the poor and displaced in the face of violence, hunger, and insecurity. And we will continue to stand with them.

Haiti: Hunger is the Unrelieved Disaster

2010-04-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

Before the earthquake, Haitians were contending with disaster. And this was a disaster in the true sense of the word: a sudden and calamitous break from the norm, an event that brings great suffering. Anybody with a cursory understanding of history or current events knows that Haiti is a poor country—poorer than poor. But while the many learned, in graphic detail, about the extent of hardship caused by this winter’s earthquake, comparatively few people knew exactly what the Food Crisis (which became acute in 2008) had done and was doing to the people of Haiti.

The Food Crisis is a phenomenon that is still playing out. It is little understood, although its effects are having a profound effect on the poorest of the poor, those who squeak just barely above or below the margin of survival, depending on how much money or labour they can trade for sustenance. We know that it is related to broad and deep factors, such as the dietary trends towards more meat-eating (which is more agriculturally expensive) in rapidly developing economies, or weather patterns that are growing more erratic. The world body has so far come up with only one solution to the problem of many millions more people for whom grain has become too expensive: more donations to the World Food Program, please. And quick.

But it seems the donations don’t come easily or quickly enough. In Steven Stoll’s excellent Harper’s article ‘Towards a Second Haitian Revolution’ (April 2010), he reports that after 2008, ‘Haitians lined up for rations and filled their bellies with fine silt, mixed with water, shortening, and salt, shaped into discs and set out to harden in the morning sun. Dirt eating in Haiti stems from a craving not for any trace minerals the eaters might ingest but for the sheer mass in the gut. As one woman said to a journalist, “Once you eat [the biscuits] you don’t feel hungry anymore. That and a glass of water and you feel satisfied.” To supplement the clay cakes, children compete with pigs for the gleanings along open sewers.’

Once every penny has been spent for earthquake relief in Haiti, we must tackle another disaster, a precedent calamity. What is the solution for hunger as profound as this? Not mere food donations, but investments into the ability of Haitians to feed themselves, mend their own health, and sustain their own communities. Unbeknownst to most, Haitians used to easily feed themselves on their own famously productive small farms. Is it time, as Stoll suggests, to ‘give Haiti a chance to recover the best part of its history and to stun the world again with the genius of its freedom’?

See an update on HOPE International Development Agency's work in Haiti.

The unseen but lethal threat to the lives of the world’s poorest families.

2010-04-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

Trade places with the world’s poorest families and you’ll find yourself living the terrifying uncertainty and suffering that are hallmarks of life in the developing world.

When thinking about poverty and the plight of people toiling to survive under poverty’s yoke, we can quickly invoke some of the most obvious and ubiquitous images associated with the hallmarks of poverty: starvation, natural or man-made disaster, refugee camps, and the carnage caused by conflict.

For us, these images carry the threat of disturbing, if only for a brief moment, the relatively placid nature of our existence. For the poor, these images are an all too accurate depiction of threats they endure on a daily basis.

Yet of all the threats facing the world’s poorest families, there is one threat that is insidious by nature and deadly in outcome for the poor – a lack of basic medical care, caused by a lack of access to basic medicines and medical supplies.

In places like southern Sudan, northern Afghanistan, and Pakistan, common ailments easily diagnosed, treated and cured if basic medical supplies are available, have the very real potential of becoming deadly.

There is nothing common about common ailments in these parts of the world. Ailments easily remedied among populations in the developed world devastate populations in the developing world – sometimes en masse, but most often in the solitude of a small shack or hut as a family watches yet another child quietly slip from their embrace.

HOPE International Development Agency continues to address shortages in medical supplies and equipment in the world’s poorest communities by providing medical supplies and equipment to field clinics, community-based hospitals, and mobile clinics.

Generous and compassionate donors are enabling us to put life-saving medicines and medical supplies in the hands of doctors and nurses serving families in the poorest communities on earth. In their hands, even the most common of medicines or supplies becoming powerful tools in the fight to prevent disease, cure the sick, and health the injured.

Learn more about our life-saving efforts among the poorest families of southern Sudan, northern Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Afghanistan: Taking action to save lives

2010-03-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Basic medical clinic in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, one in four children will not see their sixth birthday. In a country that has 16 times fewer doctors per person than Canada this should not surprise us – but it should spur us to action.

Most deaths in Afghanistan can be avoided. Respiratory infections, diarrhea, tuberculosis, malaria, malnutrition, and measles are all preventable and easily cured with medicines and basic health services that cost only pennies per day per person. There is no good reason why these diseases, which have largely been controlled in other countries, should continue to cause so many senseless deaths in Afghanistan.

It is true that the challenge of providing comprehensive healthcare to all Afghanis is immense. Even before the war, the country’s healthcare infrastructure was among the worst in the world. Government and NGOs have made progress in recent years: more clinics and hospitals have been opened, more doctors and nurses have been trained, and healthcare is provided freely to the poorest.

But the gaps in the system are still great and people continue to fall through them.

One of the biggest gaps is the shortage of available medical supplies. Where antibiotics, bandages, and scalpels are not available, lives are lost.

HOPE International Development Agency has taken action to fill this gap in eastern Afghanistan. Earlier this month a shipment of life-saving medicines, disposable medical supplies, and basic clinic equipment was delivered to Jalalabad. The shipment will help supply several rural clinics for the next year.

More importantly, the arrival of the shipment has been a source of encouragement and hope for the doctors and nurses working tirelessly to prevent the preventable. Writing to express gratitude for the supplies, HOPE International Development Agency's local director said that the donation was a sign of compassion that is pasted in the hearts of Afghanis.

www.hope-international.com

The Philippines: Imagine 30% of One Third

2010-03-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

Howard Dee, founder of the Assisi Development Foundation, recently hosted David S. McKenzie on a visit to the Philippines. HOPE International Development Agency and Assisi have collaborated for decades on strategies to combat poverty and establish peace in the Philippines. Behind this institutional partnership are many long-standing friendships, prominent among them being the one between Howard and David.

Howard Dee is a quiet dynamo. A former ambassador to the Vatican, former advisor to the government on Indigenous Affairs, and recipient of many of the international peacebuilding community’s highest honours, he remains an elegantly humble presence. For example, when receiving the 2006 Aurora Aragon Quezon Peace Award, an event that saw his country’s luminaries gather to fete him, Dee said:

"My heart is filled with gratitude yet I feel no sense of triumph. I feel no pride of achievement in the face of so much injustice and widespread poverty that condemns so many of our people to a life of subhuman existence."

During their time together in February, Howard explained to David, in a typically transparent moment, how much it grieved him that one third of the Philippine population is under 12 years old, and a full 30% of these children are malnourished.

It is, naturally, a stunning statistic, and a surprising one at that—especially when the Philippines’ reputation as a ‘better-off’ developing nation is taken into account. The fact remains that many nations totter between security and dreadful instability, if they are not already failed states, and that this fearful margin is populated by young children—those who will succeed and those who will starve. The Philippines is no exception.

It takes intelligent policies to tackle systemic problems like war and poverty, and the people of Assisi certainly do not lack these. But it takes something else to get to the point of seeing the problem and demanding a solution. This is a quality that men like Howard Dee possess in abundance. It might be called an imaginative heart. When Howard talks about one third of the Philippines’ children, he is truly grieved because he is not engaging with a statistic, but rather his real knowledge of children, of their faces and hands and voices. Howard Dee is a man who can feel the presence of people, and this presence remains with him, informing his ethics, his interests, his sense of the way forward.

In order to address a problem as tremendous as malnourishment among children, we need to invest in the solutions that we know work. But perhaps to get to the point of being ready to make this investment, we need to exercise that quality that comes so naturally to men like Howard Dee. We need to simply see people, even when it pains us.

Learn more about the work of HOPE International Development Agency by visiting www.hope-international.com

The suffering of Ethiopian mothers can be deadly for the children

2010-03-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

When a mother is trapped in poverty so are her children. In fact, the longer a mother remains impoverished the greater the likelihood that her children will never be free from poverty.

When poverty denies a mother an education, vocational training, employment, disease prevention knowledge, and access to clean water, the outcome is devastating for her and often deadly for her children.

In Ethiopia, for example, one in eight children die before reaching the age of five - a direct result of the poverty that punctuates life in the poorest villages, towns and cities of Africa.

Each of these children has a mother who, despite her best efforts and tremendous sacrifice, feels absolutely helpless against the poverty that holds her captive.

To save the children, we need to save the mothers.

HOPE International Development Agency continues to work among the poorest mothers in Ethiopia, helping them gain access to clean water, education, vocational training, and small start-up loans that will transform their lives.

Learn more about our efforts to help the mothers and young women of Ethiopia free themselves and their children from poverty by visiting www.hope-international.com

Medical camps bring healthcare to the doorsteps of isolated communities in Pakistan

2010-02-24T00:56:00.000-08:00

For the people of Rajputan, a small Pakistani village near the Indian border, twenty kilometers of muddy road is all that stands between them and a doctor. But, without transportation, twenty kilometers might as well be a thousand. Most have never visited the nearest hospital. For the very sick, the travel itself could be a death sentence.

Basic primary healthcare is a right similarly denied to over 35 million other rural villagers. Healthcare systems do not always extend to remote areas. Doctors, medical equipment, supplies, and medicines are not always available. Even where functioning facilities exist – as they do close to Rajputan – lack of transportation, money, and awareness prevent villagers from taking advantage of them.

In this context, organizations all over Pakistan have learned that it is vital to bring healthcare to the doorsteps of the people.

Free medical camps held in remote rural areas are an effective way to treat vulnerable populations. More importantly, the camps provide an opportunity to teach villagers how to avoid common illnesses through simple preventative measures and diagnose health problems before they become fatal. Prevention is more important than the cure.

HOPE International Development Agency’s local partners in Pakistan organize hundreds of free medical camps in remote rural areas every year. At a recent medical camp this month in Rajputan, over 650 men, women, and children came to wait in long, hot lines for a chance to see a doctor without having to first walk for hours.

Each medical camp requires substantial commitment and hard work not only from our partners but from a variety of local volunteers including doctors, nurses, and administrators. HOPE International Development Agency supports their efforts by sending medicines and medical supplies for use in the camps. Several shipping containers have been sent, but many more are needed. In Pakistan, bringing healthcare to the people will require our ongoing commitment and compassion as well.

Learn more about the work of HOPE International Development Agency.

Sri Lanka and Haiti: Never Underestimate the Local Solution

2010-02-18T04:23:00.000-08:00

In 2005, when a considerable amount of aid flowed into Sri Lanka to assist survivors of the Asian Tsunami, there was a story of a 20-ft shipping container full of pepper that had been donated by some well-meaning but misguided donors. What was someone who had just lost their home to do with a sack of pepper? This is amusing, yes, but also a tragedy – such a waste of generosity at a time great suffering. This, unfortunately, was one of many such stories.

At the same time, however, there were tales of heroism and generosity among the people living in or nearby affected communities. Residents rallied to establish search parties for those still missing, or help build temporary shelter from debris, or to share meals with one another, to care for each other. Locally, so much was done to help.

During times of crisis, or simply within the context of poverty, the power and effectiveness of a local solution is proven over and again. Who better to make a difference for another person in need than someone who is there? Local understanding of the language, social and political context, geography, and people is critical to providing help that is both appropriate and cost-effective.

Being a steward of donated money HOPE International Development Agency strongly believes in enabling local solutions in times of disaster and in the context of poverty.

For instance, now during the crisis in Haiti, HOPE International Development Agency has been able to support established networks of medical professionals fully engaged in helping survivors from day one. It has been important to get some resources – supplies, medicines – to Haiti and this is proving extremely difficult in a poor country where the primary communications and transportation infrastructure was destroyed. However, by working with committed friends in the Dominican Public, HOPE International Development Agency has been able to get aid to people in Haiti who know how best to use it, and do so quickly.

To take this approach, HOPE International Development Agency must have relationships with people from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. These relationships existed before the earthquake, and will be strengthened because of the collaboration now taking place. It is a healthy relationship borne out familiarity, and anchored in trust.

But the role of the donor is essential. There is an extreme lack of resources in parts of our world. HOPE International Development Agency endeavors to exchange donations received into a tangible expression of compassion where it is needed. By working with our friends living in places facing crisis and hardship, HOPE International Development Agency maximizes the benefits of this exchange.

Learn more by visiting www.hope-international.com

Filmmakers bring stories of hope

2010-02-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

Our small team of volunteer filmmakers is traveling this week to Bonke district, Ethiopia. They will be there to capture, in their inimitable way, the situation of families living right on the edge. There are thousands of families in this district without access to clean water; for them preventable deaths and chronic illness is the rule.

We are extraordinarily grateful for the volunteers who use their considerable skill to tell the story of families living in poverty. From year to year, professionals Mark Chow, Laurie Case, Rob Kelly, Tanya Maryniak, Craig Cross, Joe Babcock, and Murray Forward, decide among themselves who can take out the time to travel, film, direct, produce, and edit a powerful documentary for the benefit of HOPE International Development Agency’s friends and supporters. They donate hundreds of hours and many thousands of dollars of professional work, and in the end, they give us a story.

Learn more about the work of HOPE International Development Agency by visiting www.hope-international.com

HAITI UPDATE: More medicines and medical supplies bring more hope!

2010-02-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

Four weeks after the earthquake, the staff of Justiniano Hospital, north of Port-au-Prince, continue treating Haitians who fled Port au Prince and surrounding areas in a desperate search for treatment of their injuries.

Doctors and nurses at the hospital are greatly encouraged by the arrival of significant quantities of additional medicines and medical supplies delivered late yesterday afternoon by HOPE International Development Agency. Barry Bartel, a HOPE colleague on the ground in Haiti coordinating the effort, accompanied the shipment.

The shipment is the third such shipment, and more shipments are on the way as workers at the hospital and other distribution areas strive to help as many of the survivors as possible.

A public health specialist assisting at the hospital says that the medicines and medical supplies provided by HOPE International Development Agency are crucial and are exactly what is needed due to high demand and short supply.

Bringing medicines and supplies overland from the Dominican Republic, a strategy employed by HOPE International Development Agency within 24 hours of the earthquake, continues to be a very effective way to deliver the supplies as rapidly as possible.

Visit www.hope-international.com to donate today.

Haiti: Today’s Stories, Tomorrow’s Accountability

2010-01-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

Clifferd Dick, HOPE International Development Agency's Director of International Relations, was recently in Haiti to oversee the first stage of our relief and rehabilitation plan for people affected by this month’s devastating earthquake.

Many British Columbians had the opportunity to hear Clifferd interviewed on CBC Radio’s afternoon talk show BC Almanac. You can hear Clifferd's reflections on the disaster and HOPE International Development Agency's response right here.

The Burnaby Newsleader also had a chance to speak to Clifferd and David S. McKenzie, HOPE’s Executive Director. You can find that article here.

The focus that the media at all levels has maintained on the situation in Haiti is rare, and does enhance the ability of organizations like HOPE International Development Agency to help Haitians. We appreciate coverage of our efforts. However, we are aware that an outspoken public campaign should be equaled by our long-term commitment to accountability.

We want to tell our supporters about what their gifts are doing for Haitians. When the official media is no longer focused on Haiti, we will be especially careful to report to donors like you.

Visit www.hope-international.com today and learn more about our work in Haiti.

We also always welcome your emails and phone calls:
hope@hope-international.com
1-866-525-HOPE

Haiti Update - January 25, 2010

2010-01-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

HOPE International Development Agency responded rapidly in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. Immediately after the quake, two trucks full of medical supplies and medicines, including much needed antibiotics, were rushed to affected areas in Haiti via the Dominican Republic.

Clifferd Dick, HOPE International Development Agency’s Director of International Relations, has been in Haiti, facilitating the clearing and procurement of additional shipments of desperately needed emergency medicines and supplies needed to continue treating the survivors.

Even now, as we continue to provide emergency supplies required to support the survivors, we are planning ways through which we can help Haitians rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the this devastating disaster.

Visit www.hope-international.com to learn more about our efforts in Haiti and to give.

Haiti Update - January 20, 2010

2010-01-20T03:31:00.000-08:00

With an estimated 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless, the need for emergency supplies continues in the aftermath of a massive earthquake in Haiti.

HOPE International Development Agency has responded swiftly to the disaster. Personnel and medication commonly used to treat infections and trauma in emergency situations have already been sent to the earthquake-affected area through the Dominican Republic.

By gathering medical supplies and relief items available in the Dominican Republic and transporting them by land, HOPE International Development Agency is responding quickly and effectively to help earthquake survivors.

HOPE International Development Agency’s Director of International Relations, Mr. Clifferd Dick, is currently in the Dominican Republic, en route to Haiti. Clifferd has also facilitated the clearing and procurement of emergency medicines and supplies that will be used to treat earthquake victims.

Given the damage to ports and airports in Haiti, the Dominican Republic has proved to be a strong alternative entry point for supplies being shipped internationally. Channelling aid through the Dominican Republic will help to avoid delays in delivering aid and save many lives.

HOPE International Development Agency will continue to intensify our response in the coming days.

Help save lives today.

Saving lives in the aftermath of massive earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

2010-01-13T12:07:00.000-08:00

“Worse than a war zone”… this is how one survivor of the killer earthquake that struck Haiti this week describes the capital city of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that brought the capital city crashing down on top of it citizens.

HOPE International Development Agency is responding immediately by ensuring survivors receive urgently needed supplies of food, medicine, water, and temporary shelter.

The coming days, while less shocking than the moment the earthquake struck, will be no less devastating as more bodies are found and a lack of essentials, like food, water, medicine, and shelter, create a crisis that could end up being just as deadly as the earthquake.

Haiti’s Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, states that the death toll could exceed well over 100,000 people as more bodies are discovered in the coming days - crushed underneath thousands of collapsed buildings, homes and tons of rubble that has turned Port-au-Prince into one massive disaster zone.

The magnitude of the destruction is frightening and the death toll disheartening. Some of the city’s largest buildings could not withstand the earthquake and now lie in ruin, including Parliament, hospitals, and schools. Thousands of homes vanished, along with residents, in an instant.

We need to respond right now or it will be too late for many of the survivors as life’s essentials - food, water, shelter, and medicines - become even more scarce.

See how HOPE International Development Agency is responding to the crisis and give today.

You Get What You Give

2009-11-04T04:30:00.000-08:00

Here’s a bit of advice to help you navigate what promises to be yet another frantic holiday season, fraught with the dichotomies that have become the hallmark of the modern Christmas.

If you want joy, happiness and hope this season - then give joy, happiness and hope.

Simply put, you get what you give.

If you’re looking for joy, then give the kind of joy an orphaned or abandoned child will feel when your gift rescues them from what promises to be a short and brutal life in the filthy back alleys of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

If you’re seeking happiness, then give the kind of happiness a mother will feel as her child receives life-saving medicine and medical attention provided by your gift.

If you’re searching for hope, then find hope in giving a gift that frees an entire family from the soul-crushing poverty that is their inheritance simply because of where they were born.

Joy, happiness and hope are waiting, for you and the world's poorest families, in this year’s HOPE International Development Agency Gifts of Hope Christmas Catalog.

Visit www.hope-international.com today and chose from a selection of gifts that will last well beyond the season, never fade, never fall out of fashion, and never lose their usefulness.

When No Usurps Yes

2009-10-14T05:27:00.000-07:00

Having witnessed the carnage wrought upon humanity when no usurps yes, I can only hope and pray that enough of us on this terrestrial ball of more than 6 billion people still believe in yes, especially when it comes to helping the poor.

Yes only lives if we say it and act upon it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the same holds true for the poor. In fact, their life of extreme impoverishment - something they did not bargain for, but rather, received as their birthright - can only be remedied by a yes. In short, they live if yes lives. To put it in less esoteric terms, they live if we give.

When no usurps yes, however, the poor are robbed of their hope and their lives - as is the case for the 25,000 children worldwide who lost their lives to poverty today.

At HOPE International Development Agency, we believe in yes because we’ve seen its transforming power in action in the lives of the world’s poorest families.

For yes to live, and subsequently, for the poor to live, people like you need to keep saying yes and giving.

Put another way, saying yes is the only way to commute the sentence of suffering and death that looms over the heads of the world’s poorest families every hour of every day.

The hope of the poor continues to rest in a heartfelt yes.

Learn more about the power of saying yes by visiting us at www.hope-international.com today where you can read about what happens when people like you say yes!

Clean water arrives for 200,000 people in Derashe Woreda, Ethiopia

2009-10-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

The people of southern Ethiopia’s Derashe Woreda were literally drinking themselves to death when HOPE International Development Agency first arrived a decade ago.

At the time, only 11 percent of the people living in Derashe had access to sources of drinkable water, most of which were not reliable. The rest of the population had no source of clean drinking water. The water they could find came from filthy ponds or the silt-laden remains of dried up riverbeds - both of which were teeming with deadly parasites and bacteria.

The consequences were devastating, as evidenced by the fact that 17 of 100 children in this region were dying before the age of five.

Today, nearly all of the 200,000 people living in Derashe have access to abundant and sustainable supplies of clean water – right in their villages! Their hard work and the support of generous HOPE International Development Agency donors made it possible to construct the 85 water systems now serving the population of Derashe.

Yet as we celebrate with the people of Derashe, we are mindful of people in Bonke Woreda, a neighboring region where clean water is simply not available. Disease is ravaging their villages and their children are dying at a rate equal or greater to that of Derashe before the arrival of clean water. More than 22,000 people in the area are in need of clean water and we have begun work that will result in each one of them gaining access to abundant and reliable sources of clean water!