Contributor: Randy Martin

Tomihiro Kashiwagi and his wife, Akiko, have launched a new business converting cooking oil into fuel with a machine bought with a Mercy Corps small business grant. Photo: Randy Martin/Mercy Corps

If you had never visited Japan’s tsunami-ravaged coast until this week, the bleak landscape where homes and businesses once stood would be sobering.

Having watched the relief effort and the recovery, my visits back to the Tohoku region have been increasingly reassuring. In fact, my recent visit with colleagues from PlaNet Finance Japan and NVIDIA was inspiring. We were there to witness the signs of recovery – and we found many.

At a recent event organized by Kesennuma Shinkin, a local cooperative bank we’re partnering with to support small business recovery, 13 entrepreneurs were awarded grants. The recipients from Kesennuma and three neighboring coastal towns have used the funds to start new businesses in the disaster area. Their businesses run the gamut — from a day care center, a fish processor and a baker to a machine repair shop, a mulberry tea producer and an ice-making factory.

In only five months since its inauguration, the grant program has funded the startup of 20 new businesses (like the three featured in this video) and supported the recovery of an additional 50 businesses through a loan subsidy program. Well over 300 jobs have been created in the process. These numbers will continue to grow thanks in part to a significant contribution from NVIDIA.

But the program does more than restore jobs — it recreates livelihoods and self-determination. Each of the entrepreneurs has an incredible story to tell and an important contribution to make.

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I'm on my way to Japan to support the emergency relief efforts of our partner, Peace Winds. But I wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

Thank you for what you're doing to help people affected by this terrible tragedy. Your contributions are helping get vital supplies into the hands of families made homeless by last Friday's massive earthquake and tsunami.

Peace Winds has been delivering relief supplies to evacuated families in the tsunami-devastated city of Kesennuma. They've sent large shelters, dozens of tents, tarps, blankets and food including bread, instant rice, apples and oranges.

I've worked side by side with Peace Winds' relief teams, including after 2003's massive earthquake in Bam, Iran. They are as experienced and effective as any aid group I've encountered.

I'll be supporting Peace Winds' efforts in whatever way I can, and paving the way for additional Mercy Corps emergency responders to bolster the response.

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The first members of our emergency-response team are headed to the quake zone, where they'll quickly assess needs and begin delivering relief to affected families.

Meet our response team

Leading our response is Richard Jacquot, who has directed our relief operations in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, cyclone-battered Myanmar and the U.S. Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Gene Kunze brings 10 years of experience in humanitarian work and served as programme director for our emergency response to China's Sichuan earthquake in 2008.

Jenny Vaughn is a current member of our conflict-management team who recently served as our Head of Office in the Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest countries.

Mugur Dumitrache is a crisis-tested water and sanitation advisor who's brought innovative solutions to the aftermath of dozens of disasters, including last year's earthquake in Indonesia.

Cassandra Nelson has worked in dozens of disaster and war zones -- including Iraq, Afghanistan and post-tsunami Indonesia -- and served frequently as Mercy Corps' spokesperson in the field.

Thank you for support to families reeling from this disaster. If you haven't already, consider setting up a fundraising page on mercycorps.org to recruit friends and family to our effort.

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I've been on the phone for most of the last three hours figuring out the best way we can respond to the news in Haiti.

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has toppled buildings, including at least one hospital, and we assume there are significant casualties (the news has been slow to trickle out).

We do not currently have staff in Haiti, but we do have extensive experience responding to earthquakes — most recently in Padang, Indonesia last September. My colleagues and I have been canvassing our own emergency operations team as well as veteran relief workers from throughout the agency to determine the most qualified and immediately deployable staff.

We will begin deploying our team tomorrow and working now to line up resources to respond.

You can help our response with a gift to the Haiti Earthquake Fund. Thank you.

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Earlier today I was among representatives of seven members of Interaction, a coalition of humanitarian agencies, who met with Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The topic: Pakistan's growing IDP crisis.

Ambassador Holbrooke stressed the focus and concern of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton on the crisis, and wanted to hear from the NGOs about challenges they were facing there.

Among the issues raised by the NGOs:

• Over 80% of those displaced by the conflict are staying with host families rather than in camps — which presents special challenges to addressing their needs;
• Conditions in many of the camps are substandard — with huge challenges for appropriate shelter, water and sanitation with searing temperatures and the approaching monsoon;
• Children make up a large proportion of the displaced; and
• There is a shortage of female health workers.

Mercy Corps continues to meet the immediate needs of both host and displaced families by distributing cash grants to families that can be used to buy food, cooking supplies, bedding and other essentials.

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