Supporter: Lisa Hoashi

Small business owners have struggled to get access to the financial resources they need to recover from the March 11 tsunami that devastated Japan's northeastern coastline. They need support to purchase equipment, restock inventories and rehire employees — needs that are often overlooked in a bid to restore the country's major industries and infrastructure.

Mercy Corps has partnered with two local groups to establish the Sanriku Tomodachi Fund for Economic Recovery, using $2 million in private donations earmarked for Japan's recovery.

The programme will provide grants and subsidies to small- and medium-size businesses with less than 20 employees before the Tsunami. The three-pronged approach will provide one-year long employment subsidy for a minimum of 50 jobs, encourage up to 25 local start-ups, and provide free-interest subsidies to promote post-tsunami reconstruction.

Read more ▸

Two developers at an ADNI training event led by Google experts in Ramallah. Photo: Andie Long/Mercy Corps

Through an innovative Mercy Corps’ partnership with Google and the Source of Hope Foundation, young Palestinian web developers receive firsthand training and mentoring from engineers and business people from cutting-edge technology companies – as well as potential seed capital funding.

The Arab Developer Network Initiative (ADNI) is intended to spark innovation in information and communications technology (ICT) in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and catalyze income opportunities for youth, reaching over 1,000 Palestinian entrepreneurs in the first year. Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, is supporting the effort with a £540,000 grant and the Source of Hope Foundation is providing $1 million. Find out how you can get involved through mentoring, workshops and other opportunities.

Andy Dwonch, Senior Director on Mercy Corps’ Social Innovations team, worked alongside our Palestine team to develop the partnership. He shares more about the programme in the interview below.

What’s the project in West Bank and Gaza going to do?
We structured the Arab Developer Network Initiative to give young people the tools they need to start their own new business ventures and to launch mobile and web apps that can be monetized, so they can profit from their ideas.

The programme provides talented young Palestinian developers with technical and business training, straight from experts at Google and others who’ve been trained by them. Last month we held two-day trainings on HTML 5 and AppEngine in Hebron and Nablus and a separate event in Ramallah. Roughly 30 engineering students, engineers or entrepreneurs in each location, who already had an intermediate level of expertise in those technologies, enhanced their abilities to use these fundamental Google tools to create web and mobile apps.

Read more ▸

Thursday night at 11:32 P.M. local time, Japan's northeastern coast was struck by a major 7.1 magnitude aftershock.

The team was all okay, but the shaking was intense. Several of our team members had to leave the hotel where they were staying in, due to the damage.

Today I spoke with the team, who are on the northeastern coast, and they gave this update:

The main effect of Thursday's 7.1 aftershock is that most of the area is still without electricity. As a result, on Friday most shops were closed or their stock was in short supply, so people lacked food and supplies, and evacuees in temporary shelters spent the day in darkness. No trains were running. These hardships, combined with the fears and anxieties triggered by the major aftershock and frequent smaller aftershocks, continue to make life difficult for survivors, as well as for responders.

Read more ▸

It's been almost two weeks since people along coastal northeastern Japan saw the signs of coming tsunami waves and saved their lives by racing to safety. The water hit their cities and towns, taking away loved ones, their homes, their jobs. Leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their backs — and overwhelming uncertainty, sorrow, and fright.

Today, many of them are living in evacuation centers made out of schools, community centers and even shopping malls. Snow and freezing temperatures have struck the area again.

A woman stands on her devastated house hit by earthquake and tsunami in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan, March 15, 2011. Photo: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon, courtesy Trust.org - AlertNet

In Kesenumma city, the Peace Winds team is regularly delivering food and other relief materials to a school that shelters 700 evacuees. The central heat still doesn't work, so the team has made special efforts to get enough space heaters and warm clothing to the evacuees, which has so far met their needs. Now the pressing task is to get them additional nutritious food to supplement their meagre meals, and providing sanitary items like diapers and underwear. Evacuees are making the best of it, but I can only imagine how unpleasant it must be to have little change of clothing, and to sleep and stay in one room with lots of other people day in and day out.

Read more ▸

A man looks around devastated area hit by earthquake and tsunami in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan, March 15, 2011. Photo: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon, courtesy Trust.org - AlertNet.

About half the city completely ruined. A line visible from where the water surged, stopped and then withdrew. On one side of the line, everything destroyed. On the other side, everything normal.

This is the scene that Mercy Corps' Global Emergency Operations director Randy Martin described today, on his return from visiting the city of Kesennuma, which was badly hit by the March 11 tsunami. He'd visited the area over the weekend with Peace Winds CEO Ken Onishi. Peace Winds and Mercy Corps are working in partnership to respond to the urgent emergency needs of survivors of the earthquake and tsunami.

Survivors' living conditions are still very difficult in this area. The weather is still very cold, Randy said — like Portland a couple of months ago. Rainy, snowy, chilly. Electricity is very limited at the moment due to destroyed transmission lines and the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. There are no electric trains running and shops are all closed. Fuel is also in short supply and there are long lines of cars waiting even overnight for fuel.

Read more ▸