Supporter: Devan Wardwell

What would you do to motivate your friends to vote for Mercy Corps? Last month here at our headquarters in Portland, we knew the stakes were high — whoever received the most votes in the Western Union 50 Days Of Giving campaign would win £90,000

Senior Programme Officer Kevin Grubb was one of the brave staffer who agreed to have the Mercy Corps logo shaved onto their heads. Photo: Geena Min/Mercy Corps

To motivate our global team to vote every day on Facebook, we had staff agree to shave the Mercy Corps logo into their heads — but only if we won. When it was announced that Mercy Corps was the winner, you can imagine that those folks started to look a bit nervous.

All told, eight Mercy Corps staff members were coaxed into altering their hair; five shaved their heads and three dyed their hair the official Mercy Corps red.

Now that's dedication.

Thanks to everyone who voted for Mercy Corps during the 50 Days of Giving Campaign.

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For the past few Thursdays, bicyclists and Bollywood fans have gathered in a Portland parking lot to watch an Indian classic and support Mercy Corps' flood relief efforts in Pakistan. Photo: Courtesy of DJ Anjali & The Kid Sister

Portland is a great city for many reasons, but this town’s penchant for combining bikes with nearly everything can result in some great culture. When I heard my friends were going to Bollywood Bike In! at the Q Centre in North Portland I was excited about riding my bike, especially since there was a great sunset along the waterfront — and part of the proceeds from the movie would go to Mercy Corps’ Pakistan flood relief efforts.

As I loaded popcorn, a jacket and lights into my bike bag l realized that I had never actually seen a Bollywood movie. Qurbani, shot in 1980 and starring the inimitable Feroz Khan, was to be my inaugural Bollywood feature. This two-and-a-half hour epic about jewel thieves, love and friendship was tempered with a heavy dose of male bonding and face-touching. And the music was just awesome. So great in fact there was a group of die-hard fans in the back that knew the words to each song and were actually singing along along with every performance.

And that pretty much set the tone for the night. By the end I found myself wondering why I couldn't enjoy every movie movie like this. The crowd of about 50 cheered and hooted and laughed, sometimes with the characters and sometimes at them. I have honestly never seen so much winking in a movie.

This was the third film in the Bollywood Bike In series, organised by Portland’s popular bhangra-and-Bollywood DJ Anjali and The Kid Sister. All told, the movie nights have raised almost £120 for our flood-relief efforts in Pakistan. How’s that for Asian subcontinent solidarity?

I feel like I’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg with Bollywood. And I’m definitely riding back for more next week. Find out more at bollywoodbikein.com.

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It might look something like this video. I watched this today sitting at my desk at work — a colleague shared it on Twitter and I'm always a sucker for a funny video that is supposedly guaranteed to make me smile.

I watched and it made my day. You should watch it, too!

In its very essence, this video is about a group of strangers coming together to make someone's life better and brighter. And that's what our donors do every day: they reach out with incredible generosity and compassion — and they change someone's life for the better.

I imagine, if you could see the faces of our beneficiaries when they get a job and can finally feed their family, or are comforted by shelter and water after an earthquake, that their expressions would look similar to Mukhtar's in this video. I think he had a very happy birthday.

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The crowd grew. Candles lit children's faces. A Haitian-American woman stood up and started to to talk about the earthquake. She lamented that she had not been able to contact her family and had no idea if any of them were alive. She choked up, and couldn’t continue as grief overwhelmed her.

Many gathered outside Mercy Corps Global headquarters in Portland, Oregon on the evening of January 14 to show their support and solidarity with the survivors of the Haiti earthquake. Photo: Devan Wardwell/Mercy Corps

That moment, at a candlelight vigil Mercy Corps sponsored earlier tonight outside our Portland headquarters, drove the weight of the disaster home for me. What had been building for the last two days as I worked to raise funds for our emergency response seemed to crash down all at once.

I had been so focused on my work that I had taken very little to time to actually stop and think about just how many families had lost loved ones and how many would not live through this ordeal. When I saw the woman up at the podium alone, crying, I felt her loss.

But then I saw people step forward to comfort her. She bit back her tears and continued her speech. I saw my colleague, who had been working for 14 hours without a break, dump all the cash he had into a collection bucket. And I remembered the incredible outpouring of support from Mercy Corps’ donors during the past few days.

I realized how infinitely compassionately people can be, and when it counts that people can endure the worst of disasters and still carry on to help those who have survived. I have hope that we can still save lives, and I am certain that with enough helping hands we can rebuild Haiti for the better.

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