A Look Back: Snapshots of 2005
5 January 2006
As we continue the work begun in 2005, join us in a look back at the notable events, innovative projects, and dramatic emergencies of 2005.
Fighting Poverty Every Day
Oxfam America’s grant making program enabled community development projects in more than 30 countries to reduce poverty and defend human rights. In 2005, Oxfam America’s partners helped farmers in Cambodia and Ecuador grow more organic crops, and unemployed youth to learn literacy and essential job skills in Mali. As always, a focus on women and women’s rights continues in our work, and our program in southern Africa launched a new initiative to address the HIV/AIDS crisis and its disproportionate effects on women and their health. Our coalition campaigning to defend women’s rights to live healthy lives free of violence in El Salvador continued to build momentum. Oxfam America’s “Saving for Change” initiative was instituted in both Africa and Asia, with nearly 1,000 new savings and loan groups established in Senegal, Mali, and Cambodia.
Advocating for Change
Through grassroots events and high-level negotiating, Oxfam America campaigned to change the rules that prevent poor people from making a decent living. These included sponsoring a tour of farmers and agriculture experts from Mali and Senegal through US farming states, meetings with members of Congress and diplomats at the G8 Summit in Scotland, the UN meeting in New York, and the World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong. Oxfam worked with representatives from five countries at a shareholders’ meeting of Newmont Mining Corporation in Colorado, where they spoke directly to company leaders about the social and environmental costs of mines. At the World Coffee Congress in Brazil, farmers from Central America and Ethiopia asked the US and other International Coffee Organization members to address industry problems that affect farmers’ incomes. Oxfam’s supporters and activists held events and sent thousands of e-mails, letters, postcards, and petitions to corporations and elected officials, asking them to: reform agriculture policy, protect sacred indigenous people’s lands, and buy fair trade. Oxfam’s petition to Make Trade Fair, called the Big Noise, boasted 17.8 million signatures by the end of 2005. Signatures poured in from US venues as different as Coldplay concerts and Kansas church meetings. But poor people themselves, in countries like Zambia and Bangladesh, responded in the greatest numbers.
Responding to Emergencies
Disasters, manmade and natural, challenged Oxfam throughout the year to help meet the emergency needs of millions of hungry, displaced people around the world—some of them were right here in the United States. When hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, exposing some of the region’s most profound poverty, Oxfam America mounted its first-ever relief effort in this country. The agency employed an approach it has used effectively time and again around the world—around the coasts of the Indian Ocean after the tsunami, in northern Pakistan following the October earthquake, in West Africa as a food crisis gripped the region, and in Sudan where nearly three years of conflict have plagued the western region of Darfur. By partnering with local organizations who know their communities well, Oxfam has been able to deliver fast and well-directed assistance to the people who need it most.
