Blog Moderator's blog

People in Aid’s Staff Care Project creates a newfound experience for staff care and wellness thinking. The program develops training modules on stress reduction and self-care methods for humanitarian staff. The innovative training program, funded by the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and piloted by People in Aid in Chad and Sudan, was developed for organizations in order to create an enriched process of staff care and wellness.

In Cambodia’s northern-most province of Ratanakiri, Sap Lan shows visitors her rice field. The indigenous Kavet woman says that normally by this time the plants are up to her waist. Late rainfall in 2010 meant her rice plants barely reached her ankle. She  counted on harvesting wild fruits and vegetables from the surrounding forest for food and to earn money to buy rice.

“Some people don’t even have a home, mom!”

This was the response scribbled by my 19-year-old daughter on a note I left asking her to clean up the house.  I had written, “This house has been such a mess, I’m starting to dread coming home,” scolding my family for not being tidier.

Hard to believe she had to remind her humanitarian-aid-writer mother that I should be thankful just to have a home. But she’s right. In fact, millions of people don’t have a home; many through no fault of their own.

As the hot, dry breeze wafts through the lakeside district of Nkhotakota, Malawi, a group of women sing as they take turns to water their near-ripe crop of maize. Further downstream, another group is busy making seed beds in preparation for another crop.

It is often said that children suffer the most from food insecurity. While this is true, there is another group that suffers even more hardship – impoverished children with disabilities. In Niger, this is particularly acute in the capital of Niamey since most food security initiatives focus on rural areas.

This week I am participating in the Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in Geneva. Government delegations, UN reps, NGO workers, academics, and others have gathered to assess progress in efforts to reduce the exposure of communities to disasters.   

The news isn’t good.

In the developing world, malaria is a leading cause of death, affecting 3.3 billion people worldwide and causing almost 1 million deaths each year. In Africa alone, a child dies of malaria every 45 seconds. Not only is malaria deadly, it is also easily preventable and treatable.

“After all we had been through, it reminded me that there were still good people in the world.”

Even before the earthquake, Haiti was not equipped to provide adequate healthcare services to its disabled population. When the earthquake struck, need for these services increased dramatically.