— Padmanaban, farmer of Sengapadai
The farmers of the village of Sengapadai, India, make it their business to know what's coming. They are fortune-tellers of sorts, who look deep into history in order to forecast the future. Using methods that have evolved over thousands of years, they watch the movement of the stars, notice the feel of the wind on a given day of the month or year, and carefully observe the behavior of plants and animals. At the heart of the mysteries they set out to unravel each year is this: When will the rains come?
If they miscalculate, the consequences can be grave. In years past, it has meant families postponed not only weddings but also medical care. Sons and daughters have dropped out of school, ending their formal education. They've pawned their jewelry, which represents their savings—even the necklaces that symbolize their marriages. And, says 51-year-old Jakkammal, "In a bad year, there's only one meal a day."
The specter of bad harvests looms larger than ever these days because, as one farmer put it, "We are not getting proper rain."
Rains are coming when they shouldn't and not coming when they should, and the traditional forecasting methods, unable to adapt to the speed of change, are losing their power to predict.
"There's been a vast difference in rainfall patterns in the last 10 years," says Jeeva Rathinam, another farmer. "Before that, we used to plan properly and plant one kind of seed in the fields. Now we have to mix them together and see what comes up."
"The rainfall variations these farmers are seeing now are defeating their knowledge of the way nature functions," says Hari Krishna, Oxfam's research program manager in India.
Climate change, in other words, has come to Sengapadai.
The DHAN Foundation's ACEDRR, an Oxfam partner, has set out to help communities adjust to the changing climate landscape. Researcher B. Arthirani, herself the daughter of farmers, gathered and analyzed 40 years' worth of local rainfall data, and on a sweltering day in May 2008, the farmers of Sengapadai came together to learn the results.
Rains that once fell here predictably in July, she told them, can now be expected to arrive in late August. Then she made a proposal: delay sowing peanuts until between Aug. 10 and 16.
A heated discussion followed. Shifting to accommodate the rains could make some crops more vulnerable to infestations of weeds and pests, and the farmers argued pros and cons of various plans. But an hour later, everyone had come to agreement: the best way to balance all the factors would probably be to plant corn in September.
This is not research as it's conducted at universities, where academics carry out studies at a comfortable distance from actual farmers, and where recommendations are conveyed to the villagers in top-down fashion. That day's discussion, which began with Arthirani's educated guess about what to sow when, ended with a practical plan that drew on knowledge from both inside and outside the community. The ACEDRR study, says Arthirani, "is not a one-way process."
Community members are not simply considered beneficiaries of the study, explained Hari Krishna. "Here, they are partners in the research. They know best about their soil, their sky, their water, and what crops suit their needs."
Outside the meeting place, a heifer nosed along the roadside looking for something to graze on, and a bullock cart passed by with a load of fodder. Women headloading firewood and water walked along the dusty main street in the fierce midday sun, and in the distance, a man stood knee-deep in a pond, splashing water on his team of bullocks after what had probably been a morning of hard labor in the fields.
Fossil fuels and all their labor-saving pleasures seem to have bypassed this village entirely. There were no cars or tractors in sight, and despite the scorching temperature, no one was heading home to air conditioning or refrigerated drinks. It is a painful irony that many of those who have done least to bring about climate change are the most vulnerable to its effects.
DHAN is tackling that vulnerability on two fronts: the disaster-oriented research of ACEDRR is helping ensure that changing rainfall patterns don't lead to catastrophic crop losses, while DHAN's development programs are building resilience in other ways—helping those same farmers organize themselves into self-help groups that enable savings and investment; creating federations that have clout in the marketplace; and helping farmers gain access to high-quality seed, affordable insurance, and lenders that charge two percent interest instead of ten.
It is an approach that is working. By November it was clear that the shift from peanuts to corn was a big success. But there are signs everywhere of the growing security of this community—most convincingly in the confident smile of Jakkammal. The days of one bad harvest plunging the community into debt and hunger, it seems, are over. "After joining DHAN," she says, "we are able to have three meals."
]]>But it has—four times already this year, sloshing mud through homes, polluting wells, and forcing families in this hilly Sri Lankan district of Ratnapura to flee to higher ground until the water recedes. And while they're gone, their lives are on hold: Men can't get to work, children miss school, and women labor doubly hard over household tasks in temporary quarters.
"We're sick of the floods—going here and there, cleaning, interrupting children's education and livelihoods," said Renuka Damayanthi, a 35-year-old mother. "We have to re-organize and rebuild again and again."
There may be no worthier a place for developing a plan to reduce the risk of disasters than here in the small villages tucked into the undergrowth along the Kalu River. And there may be no women more able to help with that task than those who have evacuated their homes as many times as these women have, scurrying to gather the few household goods they know their families will need to survive. And now, with the increased frequency of those floods hinting at climate change, the need to find ways to cut down on the trouble they cause is more urgent than ever.
How involved have women become in efforts to reduce the chance their families and neighbors will run into serious difficulties from floods and landslides? And what might be holding the women back?
Those are among the central questions in a new piece of research aimed at influencing how governments think about long-lasting ways for keeping people, their assets, and their means of earning a living safe—especially in places prone to beatings from Mother Nature. In the language of the experts, that safe-keeping is known as disaster risk reduction, or DRR. Carried out by the Institute for Participatory Interaction Development and funded by Oxfam, the research is directed at promoting equal participation of both men and women in these new disaster-related initiatives.
"Women are the ones mostly affected by disaster—and the most vulnerable—and the response system isn't sensitive to looking into women's needs," said Indira Aryaratne, the lead researcher for the study, which focuses on six areas within two districts of Sri Lanka.
The research was spurred by the 2004 tsunami, as was a new countrywide focus on disaster management. But around the communities of Muwagama and Haldolla, that effort has been slow to materialize—as Aryaratne discovered in the course of meeting with scores of villagers. In Haldolla, for instance, officials called a meeting in 2006 to begin organizing a local disaster management program and to appoint people to a variety of subcommittees, but that's as far as it went. Villagers haven't met since to discuss the initiative.
"It will take a long time to internalize a strong community role in disaster risk reduction," said D. Wicramaarachi, the government official in charge of a small division of four villages. The concept is new, he said, and people have not yet embraced the idea that they can form committees that will play an important part in their futures.
And committees are just the beginning of the process, added Aryaratne. Disaster risk reduction has to become a way of thinking that should be reflected across the decisions a community makes for itself.
"DRR is a way of life," said Aryaratne. "It's not a one-off activity. Just forming a committee is not going to serve any purpose."
Slow as communities may be to organize formally around the concept, women—and men—in water-logged communities have plenty of ideas about what steps need to be taken to improve the safety and security of their families. Encouraging their direct participation in her research, Aryaratne has gathered a host of suggestions from villagers. She intends to share them with government officials and other stakeholders at a workshop.
On a hot afternoon in Haldolla, villagers came to participate in one of Aryaratne's focus groups. From large sheets of brown paper taped to the wall in the Haldolla community center, they took turns reading off their ideas for coping with the floods. Among the proposals the women had was the creation of a communal farm on land above flood level where they could grow vegetables to ensure their families had food. They asked to receive first-aid training that would focus specifically on medical problems related to floods, such as water-borne diseases. And they suggested constructing a bridge over a section of the river that would allow everyone easy access out of the area.
A short distance away, in Muwagama, women have also been thinking a lot about the flooding and how to better manage their lives around it. A group of them recently petitioned the local authorities for a boat to use during emergencies. They have also formed their own women's committee and have asked the government to authorize the committee to distribute relief food to flood victims, thereby ensuring that all local families in need get help.
Figuring out ways to cope with the inevitable is just one part of ensuring safety in areas like Muwagama. Being aware of the risks in living there is another. And whether villagers call it disaster risk reduction or not, knowing when rains will fall is key to preparing for them. The Singhalese New Year, which comes in April, is part of their calculation: a month and a half later the monsoon arrives.
"They know that after 45 days, there will be a flood," said Wicramaarachi, the local government official. "That's the traditional knowledge."
But traditional knowledge may now be butting up against climate change, demanding new ways of dealing with old problems.
"There have been changes in climate in the last five years. Massive floods used to happen every five years, but now it's 2008 and we've already faced four major floods," said Wicramaarachi.
Some also suspect that an increase in sand mining along river banks and on steep slopes surrounding the area could be adding to the flooding problem.
There have been so many floods lately that Damayanthi, the young mother from Muwagama, now no longer bothers to unpack the household goods she usually takes with her during evacuations. She has left them in satchels, ready to grab for the next time.
But so far, none of those times have been as bad as the terrible flood of 2003. One man in Haldolla said the water during that disaster reached as high as the electrical wires strung high overhead on poles along the road.
That was the flood that washed away K.G. Kandawathie's home next to the river—the one she had built with 12 years worth of savings from her job as house maid for a Korean family. She built a second home in the same location but now, with the recent series of floods, Kandawathie, 60, is feeling the strain.
"The best thing is to move away," she said.
For many people that won't be possible, and that's why embracing the concept of disaster risk reduction may be the smartest alternative for the Kalu River communities.
"If you can do something about the flooding that's the best idea," said Damayanthi, who is already sold on the concept. "Even if it's out of our control, we can reduce the damage."
]]>Watching her in action, in her long orange tunic, it's clear that Aryarathne has found her calling—far from where she began in a Sri Lankan architectural firm working on designs for multi-national companies.
How did she wind up here, near the Kalu River in the Ratnapura district of Sri Lanka, helping women think about how to keep their families safe and ease the constant hardship that flooding brings?
"I always had a passion to do something for people who are less privileged than me," says Aryarathne. During her university years—as she was working toward her goal of becoming an architect—she couldn't help but think about the community outside the institution's walls: It was impoverished and yet the development of the university had done little to address that poverty. That fact bothered her deeply.
But it wasn't until Aryarathne landed her first architectural job that she got the chance to tackle that kind of injustice herself. Her firm won a contract to develop a Colombo laundry facility—a place where scores of people manually wash clothes and linens on a large scale for clients such as hotels and hospitals. The laundry sat on prime property that a multi-national company wanted to develop—and the city had agreed to let it go ahead in exchange for the corporation's commitment to build a replacement facility.
The design of that new facility fell to Aryarathne. And right from the beginning she followed the instincts that led her to where she is now: a consultant and trainer working with poor and marginalized people who have a great deal to say about how to improve their lives, but little opportunity to be heard.
Warned that the washers could become unruly and that she should be careful, Aryarathne visited the old laundry facility. Instead of being afraid, she found herself deep in conversation with the people there—after telling them the truth about the construction proposal. If it happens, she asked, what would they like a new facility to include?
The floodgates opened, and though she didn't know it then, Aryarathne had her first exhilarating experience with participatory action research—a method of working with communities on problems whose solutions they will own. At that first laundry meeting, she learned everything about their work, from soaking and soaping, to boiling and hammering.
"That was my first exposure to a community—and it was really good," said Aryarathne. "I knew they had a lot to tell me and all that my boss had said was not true."
Soon after followed other participatory architectural projects, and gradually Aryarathne came to see where her real interests lay: With people working on initiatives that will improve their lives.
Fourteen years ago—leaving behind years of training and a budding architectural career—she made the shift from the private sector into the development world. And she hasn't looked back.
"This is more satisfying than architecture," says Aryarathne.
In the small community building in Ratnapura, the session with community members comes to an end. Aryarathne looks thoughtful as she folds up the charts she has just made with their help—charts that list the problems associated with flooding and some of the solutions villagers have proposed. She will compile the findings for an Oxfam-supported study aimed at promoting equal participation of both men and women in programs to reduce their risk of disaster.
"Architects are at the service of rich people," said Aryarathne later. "Just as you cater to multi-millionaires, villagers need our services, too."
]]>On this hot August morning in a small fishing village on Sri Lanka's southern coast, he is probing locals for a full understanding of what well-being means to them. He remains serene as they squabble a bit, call each other liars, and offer up whole new categories no one has mentioned before. When a group of men can't agree on a set of criteria, he announces a tie and allows both points to become part of the findings.
Such is the life of a researcher engaged in the ebb and flow of a study that allows its authors to enter into a direct dialogue with the community they are focusing on. The approach is called participatory action research—a method Weerackody believes in deeply. He is applying it to a piece of research intended to expand the understanding of mental health issues in Sri Lankan communities affected by natural disasters or long-term conflict. Funded partially by Oxfam, the study is part of a large, four-year project conducted by investigators from McGill University. This piece is being carried out by the People's Rural Development Association, McGill's local partner.
"People are never given a chance to participate in the decision-making process," says Weerackody. "And this is what we need"
That lesson became all too clear in an earlier study he had helped to conduct on the impact of the aid system on communities affected by the tsunami. People received goods that weren't relevant to their lives, that were of poor quality, that weren't useful, says Weerackody—all because no one had bothered to consult with the communities themselves.
"It's about attitude and the way the colonial system was established," he adds. That system says decisions should be made by technical experts or politicians. "They think people don't know what they want."
Weerackody thinks otherwise.
"If it is decided by someone else, people don't have any feeling it is part of their lives," he says. And aid agencies have enough experience building roads, community halls, culverts, and the like to know quite well what will happen if beneficiaries aren't involved from the start: As nice as the facilities are, they won't be maintained, says Weerackody.
A relocated fishing village in which he has been conducting research recently offers a case in point. The hillside homes, sturdy but small, now house 55 families formerly living near the sea, and a newly built community center at the top of the hill serves as gathering place for all.
"They have a house but they're not happy," says Weerackody. "That house was not spacious. They can't entertain their relatives. They don't have enough place to sleep. One woman said she can't even make love with her husband. The lesson we learn from the study is you may design houses, but what's needed by development workers is to take into consideration other aspects of well-being."
From a rural community himself, Weerackody, who has been working in participatory development since 1982, says he takes pleasure in meeting with local people to learn about their opinions and needs—an important perspective to understand since so much of the country's population is rural. About 80 percent of Sri Lankans live in rural areas, Weerackody points out. And whenever he's got a free moment, he heads out of Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital and his current home, to visit the village in which he was raised.
"I have a strong belief in community consultation," he says. "Development workers should respect the communities and should win the trust and confidence of communities."
]]>Until then, the Dhan Foundation had never been involved in disaster response. But when the team got back to Tamil Nadu, they learned something new: that people engaged in Dhan Foundation's long-term savings groups and federations had been the first to respond to the tsunami in their communities.
"They had the networks and the resources they needed to respond," says R. Sangeetha, who at the time was a faculty member at Tata-Dhan. This gave the team an idea: Dhan could respond to the tsunami in the coastal areas, but not just for the short term.
"Instead, we decided to commit to working there on a long-term basis," said Sangeetha, to provide relief and rehabilitation, but also to reduce the risks and vulnerabilities of those communities to future disasters. Oxfam helped the Tata-Dhan Academy take this commitment a step further, supporting them to create the Advanced Center for Enabling Disaster Risk Reduction (ACEDRR), an institute within the academy that helps communities that participate in Dhan's development programs reduce the risk that a disaster will undo their hard-won gains against poverty. Sangeetha became the coordinator of the center.
The goal, says Sangeetha, is to "help development professionals to see every development action in a disaster risk reduction perspective."
People her whole life told Sangeetha that she would thrive in a service job, working with the very poor, and she agrees. "It's in my nature," she says.
She studied agricultural management at university, and decided to take a two-year job in social work to see if she liked it.
Her first job was with a tribal community in the north of the country. She lights up when she remembers it. "I loved it there," she says. "You would always find me in the communities, playing with the children or talking to people. I never wanted to leave at the end of the day."
It was early in her tenure there that she observed some children playing ball, and one girl sitting out. She asked the girl why she wasn't playing. "She said she had cancer in her legs," says Sangeetha. "The other children knew she had cancer, too. But no one knew what it meant to have cancer."
Sangeetha knew that cancer untreated would be deadly, and took it upon herself to get the child the care she needed. But when she took her to the hospital, she got some terrible news: The girl would have to lose her legs.
Sangeetha fights tears discussing this experience, even so many years later.
She counseled the family and the community, who were skeptical of harsh medical interventions like this one. Eventually, though, they decided to opt for surgery. "It was a very hard time," Sangeetha says. "I was with her every day in the hospital."
Now, seven years later, the child is 17 and healthy. Sangeetha has done her best to keep in touch the girl and her family, though it's been at least a year since she's heard anything. That experience made her decide to continue helping people as best she could.
Of her career choice, Sangeetha says "it's such hard work, but it's such important work. Even if you just help one person, it's worthwhile."
"And everyone here feels the same way," she says, gesturing to the Tata-Dhan Academy. "They all care so much. That is why this is such a wonderful place to be."
]]>But with more hotels lining the coast, more pollution in the water, more trawlers from South Korea, and correspondingly smaller fish catches every year; poverty is a more immediate threat for these families than natural disasters. Fishermen are using the life-vests to stay afloat in an economy on the verge of leaving them behind.
Economic development and vulnerability to disasters are intricately linked. "Disaster risk increases as a result of the process of human development," explained Professor Hemanthi Ranasinge at the opening of the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute's Oxfam-sponsored disaster risk reduction resource center.
This applies to the rising vulnerability of the poorest people in fast-developing India.
Take these fishing families, for example. When the Visakha Patnam Steel factory moved in 20 years ago, it forced the relocation of a number of families away from the coast. They lost access to the sea, their only income.
Arjilly Dasu was just a child when his family was relocated by the steel plant. Dasu has since founded the District Fishermen's Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA), an Oxfam partner organization that works for the rights of fishing families in the area.
DFYWA has been working in this community for the last 5 years; helping people add value to their catch, diversify their livelihoods, save their money, pay off their debts and buy insurance.
The group also advocates for fishing families in legal battles against the coastal development projects that are supplanting them.
In 2005, DFYWA won a stay but eventually lost the battle of a beach road expansion in Visakha Patnam that displaced eight fishing villages. They have recently lost a similar battle with hotel developers in the area.
Despite the losses, Dasu has made sure that relocated families received relief packages that might lessen the toll development is taking on them.
While development puts poor people at risk of disasters, the two are linked in another way. Disasters undo development gains. As Professor Ranasinge said, "disasters put development at risk."
Disasters are expensive. Swiss RE, the Swiss Reinsurance company, estimated total economic losses caused by the tsunami, including damaged property and interrupted tourism, at US$15 trillion.
Disasters impact donor wallets too. In 2005, American individuals, foundations and government donated US$175 billion to people affected by the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Central American mudslides and the earthquake in Pakistan, said a report by OECD.
When it comes to disasters, the adage about an ounce of prevention applies. With a little more money spent on effective disaster prevention, huge amounts like these could instead be spent on innovation and investment.
Disaster prevention includes disaster-focused interventions, like flotation devices, early warning systems, or evacuation and rescue plans, as well as longer-term interventions like coastal reforestation, or clean drinking water.
But, because of the link between disasters and development, programs that reduce poverty are also disaster prevention programs. These might include helping people earn more, get out of debt, buy insurance, or claim their political rights.
Most donors, however, are moved to open their wallets only after a disaster happens, when they can see the extent of a tragedy for themselves.
"People don't want to invest in prevention," says Russell Miles, Tsunami Research Program Manager for Oxfam America.
The problem with over-investing or only investing in relief is that most post-disaster funding is bound to short time tables. "That is why we end up doing short-term interventions over and over again," Miles said.
DFYWA has found a way to bridge the gap between disasters and development.
With donor organizations that have tsunami money left to spend, DFYWA frames its projects as "disaster risk reduction" projects.
When working with fishing families, worried about tomorrow's catch, paying money lenders, getting their kids medicine and education, said Dasu, they call it "development."
"Yes, it will be useful in the next disaster," said Mahalakshmi Kara, a local grandmother, of a micro-insurance program in her village, "but it's also useful now, in the day-to-day, and for that we are grateful."
]]>Members of Oxfam International have also provided grant support for neighborhood social programs, such as the world-renowned Martin Luther King Center, a leader in popular education.
Cuba's civil evacuation and protection system is widely renowned for its excellence. Oxfam works with Cuba's Civil Defense to help communities prepare for disasters and has helped Cuba significantly reduce its vulnerability to hurricanes. In 2004 Oxfam America, as part of Oxfam International, documented these experiences and lessons in the publication "Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction in Cuba."
Gender equality is a priority in all the projects Oxfam supports. While Cuban women enjoy a wide array of rights, there continue to be gaps, particularly at home. Supporting research and sensitivity training, particularly in regards to violence against women, is a priority for Oxfam in Cuba.
As part of Oxfam International, Oxfam America has contributed roughly $1.1 million to Oxfam International's work in Cuba since 1995. All of Oxfam America's grants were approved by the US Department of State, and mostly supported agricultural transformation projects designed to improve food security.
]]>The first of the schools is scheduled to open this month in the city of Pengzhou. The building is constructed out of strong, lightweight materials, and it's designed to last for ten years or until it can be replaced by a permanent structure. Its outer walls are made of Styrofoam encased in thin steel sheets, and inside are classrooms, offices, and a cafeteria. It is a primary school that will serve 932 students, and it's supplied with desks, blackboards, and other supplies—all purchased as close as possible to the earthquake-affected areas in order to boost the economy of the stricken region.
A central feature of the Pengzhou school is that, like the others to come, it is earthquake resistant.
"It will be able to withstand a quake of up to 7.0 on the Richter scale," says Howard Liu, Director of Oxfam Hong Kong's China Unit.
After a disaster, it's crucial for aid providers to do whatever possible to ensure that the affected communities won't have to relive the terrible episode one or two or ten years down the road.
"We can't prevent earthquakes," says Oxfam risk reduction specialist Jacobo Ocharan, "but we can try to prevent future earthquakes from causing so much suffering."
]]>It's these experiences that have helped convince us that our current system of international food aid needs to be reformed. It needs to be faster, more flexible and cheaper. Instead of dumping surplus domestic production as "in kind" food aid, donors should provide cash for governments and aid agencies to buy food locally. This is usually more efficient and better for local agriculture.
Here are some examples of how this kind of aid can work during humanitarian crises.
In the North Bank Division of Gambia food shortages are a constant threat as people struggle to manage the delicate balance between their needs and what the environment can provide. Will there be enough rain to allow crops to grow? Will locusts devour whatever villagers manage to coax from their fields?
A simple solution promoted by Oxfam's local partner, Agency for the Development of Women and Children, or ADWAC, takes the edge off those questions: If villagers had a way to save some of their food and seeds at the end of each harvest, they could have a reserve to fall back on during times of shortage. The trick was to get started.
ADWAC's plan called for building and stocking four cereal "banks"—tidy white structures the size of small houses which can hold up to 30 metric tons of cereals—located at strategic points around the communities. Villagers then formed committees to manage the stored supplies. Those who borrow from the storehouse during a food shortage are obliged to repay the loan and tack on a little extra, too, so that the project can grow.
Now, if drought should shrivel their crops or pests consume them, villagers can turn to that bank of grain, avoiding the need to eke what they can from an overstrained environment. The bank will help them weather tough times.
Inside the Dasilami storehouse one day last year, the sweetness of harvested grains filled the hot dry air. Heavy sacks—they weigh just under 200 pounds—stuffed with corn and millet were stacked nearly to the ceiling. Outside, in the shade of a tree laden with mangoes, Nyima Filly Fofana, a mother of nine children and an organizer for one of the cereal bank management committees, talked about what it was like one year recently when both locusts and drought hit the area.
"We experienced a very bitter time," she said. "The family was hungry." In times of food shortages, Fofana's family manages by selling the salt she harvests from mud flats near her home and by eating whatever vegetables they can grow in their garden. But if such trouble should strike again, this time Dasilami has the seeds of a solution—one that can now spread to other villages, too.
"Our worries will be temporarily solved," said Fofana, clapping her hands at the thought of the white building gleaming there in the sun, stocked with grain. "We'll have food. Therefore our families will not cry. Our stomachs will no longer go empty."
When a catastrophic earthquake hit northern Pakistan in the fall of 2005, it left three million people homeless and more than two million people needing food aid to survive the winter.
Around the devastated town of Balakot in the Northwest Frontier province, Oxfam organized a program that provided families with vouchers to use among a selected group of merchants. Not only did the vouchers offer earthquake survivors the chance to make their own choices about which goods would best meet their needs, they helped to revitalize local markets by boosting commerce and allowing traders to rebuild their businesses.
For one young boy, the program helped restore a sliver of normalcy to his life by allowing him to buy familiar goods.
"My father was killed," he told an Oxfam staffer at a general store in Balakot. "My mother is very ill. She has asked me to buy flour, black tea, and sugar."
The program, which also included the distribution of some cash and building materials, reached more than 48,000 people, giving them a real say in the kind of help they received.
Before a lack of rain shriveled the pastureland in Niger and swarms of migratory grasshoppers stripped it clean, Koumba Yacouba's family owned a magnificent herd of cows that was 200 head strong. But drought and pest infestation wiped them out in 2005—a story repeated across Niger where untold numbers of herders all depend on their animals for food. The shortage of fodder was the worst in Niger's history.
High cereal prices and decimated herds combined to create a food crisis for 3.6 million people—nearly one-third of Niger's population.
In response, Oxfam and one of its local partners, the Association de Revigoration d'Élevage au Niger, or AREN, set up a $2 million program in southeastern Niger to help nearly 131,000 people. Their weakened herds figured prominently in the effort. The goal was to help reinvigorate the local economy by stimulating area markets.
For a fair price, Oxfam bought cattle that were too emaciated for herders to sell. Cattle prices had plummeted, falling to 90 percent lower than they had been before the crisis. Even healthy animals were fetching only a fraction of their former value: Strong bulls that once went for $500 were being sold off for as little as $18.
Oxfam began purchasing cows from local breeders for $53 a head. That money allowed people to buy food from local traders to feed both their families and their remaining animals.
In addition, Oxfam had the cows it purchased slaughtered in the villages and the meat inspected by vets to make sure it was fit for consumption. In exchange for some of the meat, village women worked to dry or fry the beef which was then made available to hungry families who traded their vouchers for it. People earned the vouchers by working on community improvement projects such as the construction of small reservoirs to catch and store rainfall.
"Oxfam's response is stimulating the economy by trying to use local markets," said Mike Delaney, Oxfam America's director of humanitarian response.
"We cannot believe that we are now able to eat meat," said Khadydiatou Labarang, whose daily diet had been a single meal of millet before Oxfam initiated the program.
]]>Only hours before, news of a double disaster had reached Oxfam America's office in San Salvador. A volcanic eruption, followed by an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 had launched an exodus from the capital city. Hundreds of thousands of people were on the move, rushing from collapsed homes to ill-equipped shelters on the outskirts of town. Oxfam staff scrambled to respond, contacting local partner organizations, government offices, and the UN to begin coordinating aid delivery.
It was a scene from a major disaster. Or perhaps not.
Outside Oxfam's San Salvador office, it was a peaceful day. The loudest sound was the whistling of a flock of clarineros in the trees, not the blaring horns of desperate drivers, and there was no sign that the ground beneath the neighboring buildings had slipped and shuddered.
In fact, this was a scene from a disaster simulation—an elaborate fabrication designed to ensure that the Oxfam staff are poised to respond quickly and effectively in a major emergency. The staff had gathered in the office that morning knowing a "disaster" was coming their way but with no idea what it would turn out to be, until "news flashes" began revealing an emergency that appeared to threaten both the city and the office itself.
First things first: in the simulation as she would in real life, Regional Director Susan Bird made sure all the Oxfam staff and their families were safe. Then she and her staff launched an all-out effort to get aid to the affected communities.
Yet, for hours—just as in real-life emergencies—there were 20 important questions for every answer available. How many people have been affected? Where are they moving to? Who's been left behind? What are the most urgent needs? What are the government and other NGOs planning to do? What support do our partner organizations need to begin delivering aid? Are the displaced people safe? Who needs our help the most? What's our plan of action?
"It's crazy. The numbers are changing every five minutes. It's difficult to get a grasp of what's really going on," said communications officer Tjarda Muller.
"In real emergencies, we have to be swift and coordinated. Lives depend on it." — Dawit Beyene, Oxfam America's deputy director of humanitarian response
Soon, Vanessa Lanza from Oxfam's Boston office was stretched to the limit in her role as staff member of a partner organization, trying to learn about the most urgent needs on the ground as she pulled together a sketch of how many families her group could assist with what kind of aid, along with a budget to submit to aid agencies she hoped would support her. "This is hard. I have so much to do. It's chaos for a partner to respond to the community and at the same time to coordinate all the sources of funding."
In another office, key emergencies staff met with the director to hammer out Oxfam's plan of action.
"We need to look at the risks people are facing," said Susan Bird. The plan would have to consider the potential for looting, aftershocks, crowding, lack of water, disease outbreaks, and violence.
"We're talking about 300,000 displaced people," Enrique Garcia, Oxfam's Regional Humanitarian Coordinator, reminded the group. He described the chaos that can ensue when even relatively small numbers of people gather at emergency shelters like gyms and schools.
The initial action plan began to emerge: the government had announced it would supply aid to the large shelters for displaced people, so Oxfam decided to focus its resources on the under-served groups gathering in informal shelters. But delivering aid after disasters is never simple. Latrines would be crucial for sanitation, but digging pits or trenches would be impossible where people were gathering in paved, urban settings. And the displaced groups would need plenty of clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing, but the staff had learned from past experience that there aren't enough tanker trucks in El Salvador to transport the water that would be needed.
"We'll have to bring trucks in from Guatemala," said Garcia.
Every now and then laughter rippled through the offices as staff members circulated offbeat messages and photos to ease the tension.
But for some, it was hard to keep in mind that this wasn't a real emergency. At age 52, Oxfam staffer Milagro Orellana (or Niña Mila, as she is respectfully called) has experienced many disasters, and the simulation roused painful memories. She recalled the day in 2001 when a powerful earthquake struck El Salvador.
"It was a Saturday, and I had gone to Santa Tecla to buy supplies. When I returned, I heard this sound like a bomb had exploded. I was still on the bus, which was shaking. I saw walls falling down from houses. People started running all over the place. Since it hadn't been that long since the war ended, I thought maybe someone had bombed a building. I was very afraid for the lives of my children." She trembled as she spoke of it. "When I got home I found my family out in the street, screaming."
Oxfam helped her get back onto her feet after the real earthquake, and on this January day she was pleased to help the office hone its skills for future emergencies.
At 4:30 in the afternoon, the organizers brought the simulation to a close. The action plan was complete, the partners had been activated, and the Oxfam response was up and running. The first two days of a disaster response had been squeezed into seven hours, but from the look of the tired faces, some of the staff might as well have lived through 48 hours of a real-time emergency.
Next on their agenda: the crucial final day of the exercise, where the office would map out a plan to improve its disaster readiness.
"It really put us in the mindset of a major emergency and allowed us to have a good look at what we're doing right, and what things we need to do better," said Susan Bird. "In this case, when the stress got too intense, we could remember that it was just an exercise. In a real emergency, we know there are people out there who need our help, and we need to be as prepared as possible to deliver it quickly and effectively."
Niña Mila looked relieved at the end of the day. "I feel good. It was a big experience for me. It made me feel like how I would actually act in a real emergency. I had no idea I could do this. So thank you."
]]>And they're exactly what Oxfam America and its local partner, the Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative, hoped to spot when, together with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, they piloted an innovative early warning system for the region. Now just beyond its first six-month trial period, the system is designed to track changes in local conditions that could signal the advent of hardship for people—and get them help before the problems spiral out of control. The program is targeting 21,346 people scattered in the villages of Tuka, Arganne, Danbii, and Mudhi Ambo.
Oxfam and its partners started this initiative following a devastating drought in 2006 that left more than 60 percent of the livestock dead in some pastoral areas. The drought was accompanied by conflict that forced the displacement of many people.
How does a disease with no name in a remote and dusty part of Ethiopia find its way onto the radar screen of an international aid group a third of the way around the world? Through a lot of hard work.
It starts with data collectors—four of them, hired by Gayo—with strong legs and the commitment to make a monthly trek to five far flung households in each of the four villages. Sometimes, the data gatherers, who are all women, will walk a full day to reach the households that are participating in the program. Selected by Gayo, the households represent a range of prosperity, with some better off than others.
And it's the women in those households that the data collectors have come to see—because they are the ones with the hard facts about the well-being of their families. The women are available most of the time while the men are away, traveling with livestock in search of pasture and water. Out and about in their villages, the women have been keeping mental tabs on what's been happening with others, too.
How much water seems to be in the ponds and streams this season compared to last? Are there more cases of diarrhea in the village this month—or less? How many meals a day are children getting? And how about the adults?
"Women know it all," said Miriam Aschkenasy, Oxfam's public health specialist who helped to develop the program, including those questions. They are designed to reveal critical information that can paint a comprehensive picture of a community's health. And they give the women a way to voice the knowledge they have of their community and local environment.
"The women make sure they're informed about what is happening in their villages. They talk to other women in anticipation of the data collectors' arrival," said Aschkenasy.
"The community saw this program as having a lot of value," added Emily Farr, Oxfam America's deployable humanitarian officer who, with Aschkenasy, recently made a field visit to Ethiopia. "Never before has someone come to their houses to collect information on them. It makes them understand people are concerned about what's affecting them. It makes them feel valued."
The data collectors spend 20 to 30 minutes at each of the five houses on their list, and plot the answers to 24 questions on a visual analog scale—a tool that gauges attitudes and perceptions that cannot be easily measured. And in this case, it's particularly useful in gathering data from people who may not be able to read. It's also easily convertible for charting on a graph—from which the trends then become visible.
"We are using scientific methodology to convert feelings into comparable data," said Aschkenasy. "That's what makes this cutting edge."
Once the collectors return home with their data—about malaria and milk production, plantings and harvests, livestock deaths and births—Gayo compiles it, along with anecdotal comments gleaned from the villagers as well as statistics gathered from district markets and health posts, and from the Oxfam office in Addis Ababa the material gets emailed to Boston.
"One of the things important to me is that this early warning system is based on evidence," said Aschkenasy. "That increases your ability to do monitoring. It also lets you know that the programs that follow are based on real information, rather than conjecture, and can be sharply focused."
For instance, said Farr, if there is a problem with food availability, this kind of tracking system will help aid groups, local partners, and the communities themselves develop solutions that address that problem very specifically.
In meetings with community elders about the early warning system, they told Oxfam staffers that changes in local conditions occur seasonally—or every three months. They agreed that it would be useful to analyze those changes on a quarterly basis. Regular analysis would allow them to pool their resources and develop timely solutions to their problems.
Community elders also said that they could use the data to address ongoing issues, too, such as with the quantity and quality of water available for villages.
"One solution is to reduce the distance to water by digging more ponds and building cisterns," said one of the elders. "We can contribute the manpower and may ask for small inputs like cement."
But for now, what about those camels?
Nazareth Fikru, Oxfam America's regional humanitarian coordinator based in Addis Ababa, said that data gathered from the communities around Moyale show that about 189 of these highly prized animals have died in the last six months.
"The disease was initially reported in May, 2005 in Afar—eastern Ethiopia—some two years ago and gradually expanded to other pastoral areas like the Somali region and the Borena area of Oromia," said Fikru. "Some research is going on by the ministry of agriculture and rural development together with the Food and Agriculture Organization, but so far, no information about the causes or controls has been shared."
Oxfam is not planning to address the camel illness itself, but the fact that it has showed up in the data-gathering will help the organization and Gayo stay alert to the problem and the effect it could have on the overall health of the communities they are working with.
]]>"When a cyclone hits, it means you can lose everything," said Khan, Oxfam America's humanitarian response officer in East Asia. "Rich and poor alike."
The entire coastal zone is prone to violent storms and tropical cyclones between April and May—before the monsoon season starts—and again in October and November, when the monsoon has ended. Khan estimates that cyclones have killed nearly one million Bangladeshis since 1820. In 1970, one event alone took about half those lives. With a storm surge topping 30 feet, that November 12th cyclone killed 500,000 people and more than one million heads of cattle.
The disaster pushed the United Nations to ask the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to develop an early warning system for the country, said Khan. The result was the establishment of the Cyclone Preparedness Program, a community-based volunteer organization that provides early warning to people, and then helps with relief work and first aid after the storms hit.
But 21 years after the deadliest storm in Bangladesh's history, another devastating cyclone struck the country in late April, 1991, killing 138,000 people. It was at that point, said Khan, that Bangladesh began to look seriously at the steps it could take to help people prepare for the inevitable.
At the urging of aid groups and the donor community, the government of Bangladesh began to shift its emergency response programs to focus more heavily on preparedness. When Cyclone Sidr struck a few weeks ago in mid-November, evacuation planning, early warning systems, and the establishment of cyclone shelters helped to save about 100,000 lives.
Nevertheless, the physical devastation left in the storm's wake was stunning: Sidr damaged or destroyed 1.4 million homes, hurt more than two million acres of crops, and wiped out more than four million trees. What all of that means is that people have nowhere to live, many of them have lost their means for making a living, and food reserves have been wiped out.
While aid groups like Oxfam are responding with programs to provide clean water and sanitation to prevent the spread of waterborne disease and to supplement food in the months ahead, there is a great deal more that can be done to help people stay safe—and recover quickly—from storms like these.
Khan points to the need for more research on how to build low-cost but cyclone-tolerant housing in coastal areas. And then work needs to be done on developing programs with commercial banks to finance the construction of those homes. Additionally, aid groups need to help communities explore alternative ways for people to earn their livings, so that storms like Sidr don't wipe out all their options.
For these disaster risk reduction programs to be successful, added Khan, they need to be based at the community level—where local people will know best what the particular dangers are and what steps are needed to grapple with them. But there is an international component to this too: Donors need to support the preparedness work that local governments and aid groups are undertaking. It's a smart investment. Typically, each dollar spent on reducing a community's risk to disaster is worth about $8 in emergency relief.
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"This is not a typical campaign,” said Janet McKinley, chair of Oxfam America’s board of directors and of the Campaign for Oxfam America. “We're not raising money for new buildings or for a perpetual endowment. The highest return a donor can get is to put money to work now.”
“Oxfam is seeking investors who want to expand our programs over a five-year period, building the capacity of poor communities, particularly women, to earn more, save more, invest in their families, and better manage their risks,” McKinley continued. “And given the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, those risks are rising.” McKinley and her husband, George Miller, have already committed $5 million to the Campaign for Oxfam America.
“The show of support we have seen for the Campaign is especially significant since Oxfam, in order to preserve its independence and voice, does not accept funding from the US government. The organization depends entirely on gifts and grants from individual donors, foundations, and corporations to carry out its mission of poverty alleviation and social justice,” McKinley concluded.
To date, individuals have contributed 57 percent of the donations for the Campaign for Oxfam America. Foundations and corporations have donated 43 percent. The Campaign has received commitments for 10 seven-figure and 50 six-figure gifts.
Among the leading institutional donors, the New York City-based Ford Foundation has already committed $9 million to the Campaign.
“The foundation shares Oxfam America’s commitment to reducing poverty, creating economic opportunities, investing in women and families,” said Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation. “We welcome these efforts to create lasting, equitable solutions to the most pressing global issues.”
Another major donor to Oxfam, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, CA, has contributed $4.5 million in current grants.
“Oxfam makes canny use of its financial support,” said Paul Brest, president of the Hewlett Foundation. “We share its goals of reforming aid and making global trade practices fairer as an effective way to lift the world’s population out of poverty.”
Funds raised through the Campaign for Oxfam America will support longer-term investment in four distinct areas of work: