In the News
Posted September 1, 2010 by Erin Gray
Locals urged to dig deep for Pakistan clean water project
By Michael MacLeod
The Guardian (Edinburgh), August 31, 2010
Edinburgh-based charity leader Mervyn Lee is in Pakistan this week helping those affected by the devastating flood waters.
His relief agency, Mercy Corps, helped the capital to raise nearly half a million pounds for the Haiti earthquake aid effort in January.
Now the organisation, based in Sciennes, is again calling on Edinburgh residents and businesses to donate to an urgent appeal.
They have joined forces with the Edinburgh Disaster Response Committee to help the people of Pakistan recover from the floods.
All money raised will go toward building 50 sustainable water sources across the country.
Mr Lee is overseeing the charity's distribution of emergency aid on the ground in the form of food, water, clean-up equipment and health clinics.
His colleague John Cunningham explained why the money would be spent in such a specific way.
He said: "Access to clean water is critical to prevent potentially lethal water-borne diseases like cholera spreading, particularly in areas overcrowded with those made homeless by the flood waters. If untreated, cholera can kill a child in less than 24 hours. The floods have had a huge impact on the whole of Pakistan, and there's a real risk that water-borne disease could take hold and make this tragedy even worse as the months go on.
"Immediate emergency aid is crucial, but it is just as important to make sure that people have access to clean water supply once the flood waters recede and the recovery and rebuild effort begins.
"With the help and generosity of the people of Edinburgh, we will build 50 lasting, sustainable water sources that will benefit more than 50,000 people in Pakistan. It will have a real impact that will still be felt for years to come, and will be one that the people of the Capital can be extremely proud of."
Mercy Corps has been operating in Pakistan since 1986, in many of the communities hardest-hit by this year's floods.
Edinburgh's Lord Provost George Grubb, who chairs the Edinburgh Disasters Response Committee locals were traditionally generous in tough times.
He said: "I'm pleased to have seen fast action from the British Government and aid agencies to deal with the immediate impact of this disaster. I would ask the people of Edinburgh to give everything they can to support Mercy Corps' efforts to provide assistance to communities beginning the long process of recovery. It will make a real difference to the lives of thousands of families in Pakistan. The capital has a long and proud tradition of reaching out to those in less fortunate circumstances, and I hope we will see that compassion and generosity in action as a response to this appeal."
Members of the Edinburgh Central Mosque have arranged a fundraising effort via Islamic Relief, which we will report more details of soon.
Meanwhile a dozen curry houses in the city will donate £1 from every dish sold to the flood victims.
Assader Ali, who owns Eastern Spices and Bollywood Bites in Cannonmills and Bombay Feast in Drylaw is behind the idea.
He will donate all cash raised to the Disasters Emergency Committee.
He said: "The idea is that every participating takeaway will donate a pound from every meal to Pakistan. We would like to invite all other restaurants and takeaways in Edinburgh, not just Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, to join us."
Others which have joined the fundraising effort include Paprika on Ferry Road and Cinnamon on Portobello High Street.
Donations to the Edinburgh Disasters Response Committee can be made at www.mercycorps.org.uk
Posted September 1, 2010 by Erin Gray
Call to get clean water to victims of flooding
By Rory Reynolds
Edinburgh Evening News / The Scotsman website, August 30, 2010
The Edinburgh Disasters Response Committee has launched an urgent appeal to raise money to fund clean water sources for millions of people affected by the devastating floods in Pakistan.
The city-run committee, which raised more than £430,000 for victims of the Haitian earthquake, has appealed to residents to give what they can to help to fund water sources for 50,000 people in the hardest hit areas.
The DRC, chaired by Lord Provost George Grubb, has joined with Mercy Corps, whose European headquarters is based in the Capital, to co-ordinate the appeal.
The international aid agency currently has around 350 disaster relief and aid workers on the ground in Swat valley, Sind province and other areas struck by the floods.
John Cunningham, director of fundraising at Mercy Corps, said that he hopes that, with city funding, 50 water sources to serve 50,000 people can be established.
He said: "Access to clean water is critical to prevent potentially lethal water-borne diseases like cholera spreading, particularly in areas overcrowded with those made homeless by the flood waters.
"If untreated, cholera can kill a child in less than 24 hours.
"Immediate emergency aid is crucial, but it is just as important to make sure that people have access to a clean water supply once the flood waters recede and the rebuild effort begins. With the help and generosity of the people of Edinburgh, we will build 50 lasting, sustainable water sources that will benefit more than 50,000 people in Pakistan."
Mercy Corps, which is based in Sciennes, has been working in Pakistan since the 1980s, but it has increased the number of aid workers on the ground since the floods struck in July.
Since then around 1500 people have been killed and 4.5 million have been displaced from their homes.
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has said the Pakistan floods are a "slow-motion tsunami" due to the threat of disease and appealed for swifter aid.
Lord Provost George Grubb said: "I would ask the people of Edinburgh to give everything they can to support Mercy Corps' efforts.
"It will make a real difference to the lives of thousands of families in Pakistan. The Capital has a long and proud tradition of reaching out to those in less fortunate circumstances, and I hope we will see that compassion and generosity in action as a response to this appeal."
The DRC is calling on people to donate through Mercy Corps at www.mercycorps.org.uk or by calling 0845 245 0686.
Posted September 1, 2010 by Erin Gray
Relief agency urges help for Pakistan flooding victims
By Rory Reynolds
Edinburgh Evening News / The Scotsman website, August 25, 2010
Disaster relief agency Mercy Corps has warned the situation in Pakistan may rapidly deteriorate if vital aid fails to continue reaching the victims of recent flooding.
The humanitarian agency, which has its European headquarters in the Capital, said that an onset of cholera and lack of clean drinking water could see the death toll rise quickly.
Mercy Corps currently has around 350 disaster relief and aid workers on the ground in Swat valley and Sindh province and other areas which have been devastated by recent heavy flooding.
Mervyn Lee, executive director of the agency's European headquarters at Sciennes, today echoed comments made by Pakistan's leaders that the floods will have the effect of a "slow tsunami", and urged residents in the Lothians to give what they can to help Mercy Corps maintain the supply of vital aid to the front lines.
Mr Lee, who visited the same communities that have been struck by the floods last month and is to fly out to the same regions later this week, warned that even once the humanitarian situation is brought under control, the land that many farmers lived off will take months or years to yield crops once again.
He said: "This is an unprecedented natural disaster on a scale which is difficult to imagine. Pakistan is a country with so many problems which were there before these floods arose - problems of the economy, insecurity, problems of criminality. They had a bad air crash at the end of July and then along came these floods.
"We're working in Swat valley and were also working in Sindh province where 30 to 40 years ago people claimed the savannah grasslands and with their bare hands cleared the land, made fields and made it into a very productive agricultural area.
"All that has now gone underwater. The land that has been damaged will have to be restored, in some cases, even after the waters go, it will be 14-16 months before those people will be able to get back to getting a crop to harvest. That's not to mention their houses and cattle and everything they own has been taken away.
"All of that has been taken from them now and they are clinging on to the edge for survival. I use that literally, some of them are just on high ground, they have a bit of plastic, a few possessions they've rescued and they're literally holding on until the waters go down."
Since the floods struck in July, around 1500 people have been killed and 4.5 million have been displaced from their homes.
Mr Lee added that the time of year that the floods took place would make the impact even worse for the crop cycle.
He said: "This is completely the worst time of year for this to happen. It's not the right planting time for when the land does recover and beyond that winter will set in and people living in exposed areas will be affected.
"All the work we do relies on people kindly donating what they can. The funds we receive don't pass through any institution or government hands and they go straight to the Mercy Corps team in Pakistan.
"We have a great team which have been working on projects in Pakistan for 26 years and they're being reinforced by various technical experts from around the world to support them.
"From Mercy Corps' point of view, we're just at the beginning of what will be an extended operation. At the moment we are engaged with emergency relief and then we will move on to recovery and getting these people back to their land and houses, children back to education and farmers back working in fields and that's many months ahead."
For more details or to donate to Mercy Corps visit www.mercycorps.org.uk
Posted August 14, 2010 by Erin Gray
A plea to remember Pakistan
By John Cunningham
Edinburgh Evening News / The Scotsman website, August 14, 2010
As residents of Scotland's capital, we're all accustomed to a little rain. But the flood waters that have hit Pakistan over the last two weeks are in an entirely different league.
We've all heard the statistics: more than a fifth of Pakistan is under water, 14 million people have been affected, and more than 1600 people have died. These numbers are shocking, but donations from across the UK so far have reached only a fraction of the total raised for the earthquake that hit Haiti earlier this year.
So what's the problem? Have we become completely desensitised to the images we see after disasters like these? I don't think so. Working for an aid charity based in Edinburgh but working all over the world, I know that the people of our city, and Scotland as a whole, are astoundingly generous.
In response to the dreadful earthquake that hit Haiti in January, the Evening News helped promote our appeal to help survivors, and together we raised an astounding £430,000. Because of this we could give thousands of Haitians food, water, shelter, and help them make it through the aftermath of the quake.
But I do know that it can be tough, hearing about so many disasters like the floods in Pakistan, to remember that they affect not just a country or a government thousands of miles away, but thousands of individual, ordinary families.
Mercy Corps has been working in Pakistan since 1986. Our teams are based across the country, know the local communities well, and tell us that the extent of the damage is astounding. Whole swathes of land, crops and homes have been swept away, and most roads and bridges destroyed.
I know that times are hard, and the recession has made us all think twice about reaching for our wallets. But if you can, please do donate now to help the people of Pakistan by visiting www.mercycorps.org.uk.
Posted August 11, 2010 by Erin Gray
We'll be here as long as Afghans need us
It's a tough time to be an aid worker in Afghanistan, but 36-year-old Michael McKean, who works for Edinburgh-based charity Mercy Corps in Kabul, tells us why the Afghan people need our support now more than ever.
By Michael McKean
Edinburgh Evening News / The Scotsman website, August 11, 2010
People often have the idea that there's something glamorous about international aid work. But, when it comes down to it, I work in an office and manage a team, like any number of other people in Edinburgh. It just so happens that my office and team isn't at the Gyle, or on Lothian Road - we're in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan. And rather than tram works and hoards of festival tourists, my commute to work can be disrupted by gunfire and bomb blasts.
I've been working in Afghanistan for Mercy Corps since 2008, helping ordinary Afghan families, affected by years of war and conflict, get back on their feet and pull themselves out of poverty. I'm passionate about my work and know how important it is, but inevitably, events like last Friday's killing of British aid worker, Dr Karen Woo, and nine others in north-western Afghanistan make me think hard about why I'm here.
Coming to work out here in the first place wasn't an easy decision. Even though I'd been working for Mercy Corps for years in Edinburgh, and at offices in Bosnia, Kosovo, Africa and the Middle East, during my first trip to Afghanistan back in 2006 I was still absolutely terrified. It's hard not to be when you have no idea what to expect, and all you have to go on are pictures in the news of soldiers coming home in bodybags from Helmand.
But, in the course of that first trip, and the years since, I've seen what isn't covered in the news quite as much: that the people of Afghanistan face huge, immense levels of poverty, and desperately need our help.
I know what I do is risky, and however much my team and I do to be careful, security is a concern we face every day. But conditions here for ordinary Afghan people are appalling, and I do this job because I know that we can help.
Poverty is everywhere. It is immense. The average Afghan lives on the equivalent of just 56p per day and has a life expectancy of just 43 years. Almost 70 per cent don't have access to clean, safe water, and 40 per cent don't have access to even the minimum acceptable amount of food each day.
My work takes me out across the country, and it's clear to see that the 31 years of conflict and war that Afghanistan has suffered has had a huge impact on people across the entire country.
Mercy Corps has been working in Afghanistan since 1986, helping local communities survive and recover from the impacts of war and poverty. Right now we're helping 2.5 million Afghans to stabilise and rebuild their lives, through a whole range of projects, from training local farmers to make the most of their land to provide for their families and avoid dependence on opium growing, to building irrigation systems and roads to make taking goods to market easier. We know that these kinds of projects can help local people pull themselves out of poverty.
Back in the UK it can be tough to remember that most Afghans aren't Taliban terrorists and militants. But I know, from working with them every day, that the vast majority of people here are good, ordinary people with families, struggling to make a living and feed their children.
Two years on from moving to Kabul as an aid worker, the explosions and gunfire haven't got any less frequent. But, like so many of the restrictions that working out here brings, I have started to get used to them and they worry me a little less.
The fact remains though that Friday's incident, whatever the motives, is certainly the worst attack on aid workers that I can remember. At Mercy Corps we take the security of our staff seriously, but still, most nights sitting in our offices you can feel the vibrations of distant bomb explosions rumbling through the floor like thunder, and hear barrages of gunfire.
We can't, even in Kabul, walk about the streets of the city - cars take us the few hundred metres from our guesthouse to the office, or to buy our shopping, wait for us, and take us back, for fear of attacks. It's a sad fact, though, that it's often ordinary people in the most conflict-ridden and dangerous places that need our help most. And at least as an aid worker I can leave when I need a break, a luxury that the people we work with simply don't have.
However tough it is to work in Afghanistan, I know that if I and our team can manage to make a difference here, we can do it anywhere.
Despite the risks, I'm proud to be here, and of the work we do. As a Scot I'm particularly proud to be part of an aid organisation based in Edinburgh.
The people of Afghanistan need us now more than ever. We're making a real difference, and our team will continue to help them as long as they need us.
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For more on Mercy Corps' work, and to find out how you can help, visit www.mercycorps.org.uk
Posted July 27, 2010 by Erin Gray
Human cost of Columbia’s cocaine wars
How a Scottish-based aid agency is helping survivors
By Julia Horton
The Herald, 24 July 2010
As Servio Cordoba moves slowly on crutches across the veranda, his left foot and lower leg are painfully obvious by their absence below the hem of his three-quarter-length trousers.
A white patch hides his now sightless left eye. Sitting down awkwardly on a bench outside his family home, he rests his ruined limb on a red plastic chair. Without a word, his teenage son darts across with a folded towel which he places gently underneath his father’s damaged leg to make him more comfortable. It is a simple gesture in stark contrast to the complex reality of their lives here in Colombia.
For five decades now, the land where poor farming families like the Cordobas live and work has been the battlefield of the world’s longest and deadliest ongoing conflict. At least 40,000 people are estimated to have died in the fighting and related political violence since 1986 alone.
The terror began in the mid 1960s with the formation of the leftist guerrilla groups Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and ELN (National Liberation Army). Government troops and right-wing paramilitary groups, enlisted by wealthy families to protect their property, fought back. Now the civil war effectively imprisons thousands of the nation’s poorest people in their homes since the illegal cocaine trade turned the conflict into a lucrative drugs war, and landmines became the insurgents’ weapon of choice to protect illicit coca plantations.
Paramilitaries and guerrillas alike fund their struggle through the money which Colombia generates as the world’s largest producer of cocaine – in 2007 more than 400,000 acres of the country were dedicated to growing coca, the base material for the narcotic. It has been estimated that Farc alone takes in $500m-$600m each year from the illegal drug trade.
Meanwhile the United States – a key market for cocaine – gives the Colombian government billions of dollars (£3.8bn between 2000-2009) to disrupt the drugs trade.
But critics say recent aggressive military campaigns, continued by the current administration led by new president Juan Manuel Santos of the Social Party of National Unity, do little to reduce the drugs trade but much to increase civilian casualties as rebels retaliate with more landmines.
Communities that refuse to give their land up to guerrillas for coca cultivation face intimidation campaigns which drive families from their homes, and an estimated three million people have been displaced since the conflict began. Those who remain face being massacred by both paramilitaries and guerrillas who want to drive communities off their farms to create more coca plantations, adding to the grim toll who have been killed or injured in what the United Nations has branded one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The paths, roads and mountains which local people like Servio Cordoba must navigate to go about their daily business are literally a minefield, unmarked and constantly shifting beneath their feet as war rages on around them. Locals have come to expect the rebels to abide by what amounts to a gentlemen’s agreement under which landmines are taken up during the day and relaid at night, allowing people to go about their daily business without risk.
Trusting the entente one day in June last year cost Cordoba, 36, his left leg and eye. “It was a Saturday,” he recalls. “I went out to work at 8.30am, walking along a well-used road with some friends. From 6pm to 8am it is mined and from 8am to 6pm they [the rebels] move them, so at 8.30am you generally trust that it is OK. But I stepped forward and suddenly I saw my leg without my foot.
“We looked behind us and realised we had already passed three other mines without seeing or activating them.”
Miles from anywhere, the farmer endured excruciating pain as his friends carried him on a makeshift stretcher of bamboo to seek help. Six hours later they found a military medic who gave Cordoba an intravenous drip. An ambulance took him to hospital in the town of Samaniego, near where he and his family live in the southern Colombian province of Narino. Then he was transferred to the main hospital in the provincial capital, Pasto. By then, more than 12 hours after the blast, he had lost copious amounts of blood and was on the brink of death.
The amputation operation was complicated by a severe infection that kept him in hospital for six weeks and caused him to lose vision in his left eye.
In the months since, Cordoba has been making costly trips north to the Colombian capital, Bogota, for assessments for the prosthetics he needs. He thinks he qualifies for official funding for a false leg under a government fund for war victims, but he already knows eligibility does not mean he will receive anything. His claim has so far gone unanswered. Cordoba is not alone – it takes at least a year for compensation to come through.
Nearly one in three landmine survivors is forced to take the authorities to court to get the money that is rightfully theirs, but many others do not even apply because they don’t know they are entitled to compensation or are scared to apply or don’t understand the forms.
Meanwhile families scrape by thanks to charities, friends and relatives. As Cordoba’s ordeal highlights, health services are woefully inadequate.
Since last April, however, a newly upgraded rehabilitation centre at Narino University Hospital in Pasto has been providing much better care for landmine survivors. The centre is purpose-built for people with disabilities, with modern equipment including a hydrotherapy pool. It is part of a wider modernisation programme – a remarkable achievement when many other cash-strapped public hospitals in Colombia are closing because the government is not quick to honour funding commitments.
The centre has expensive private medical suites, the income from which helped pay for the £700,000 rehabilitation centre. Scotland-based aid agency, Mercy Corps, donated an extra £121,500 for additional specialist equipment. “Without access to specialist health and rehabilitation services, landmine survivors risk infection, major health issues and death,” says Mervyn Lee, executive director of Mercy Corps’ European headquarters in Edinburgh. “Many are unable to make a living and face extreme poverty. Our local teams work across the country to help thousands of survivors, giving them access to emergency healthcare and rehabilitation services.”
Cordoba welcomes the facilities but they also remind him of what is so severely lacking in his town. “It is traumatising coming back here to nothing after all the support there [in Pasto],” he says.
Determined to be positive, however, he hopes to find labouring work when he can walk again, to support his wife and teenage son and daughter. He also counts himself lucky that they still have their home.
Many others are not so fortunate. Rebels reportedly demand as much as $1000 from civilian landmine survivors to pay for “wasting” a weapon designed to kill or maim a soldier. The fine is out of all proportion to the cost of manufacturing a landmine as a “deterrent” to discourage locals from taking risks. Unable to afford the charge, countless victims abandon their homes and land, fearing further violence.
For Maria Zuniga’s family and around 30 others that desperate journey brought them to a desolate encampment which they built themselves using mud, wood and anything else they could find.
Clinging precariously to a hillside just outside Samaniego, it is a far cry from the safe haven they dream about. On the other side of town one of the many mountains where landmines are routinely laid looms ominously.
Cradled in her arms, Zuniga’s grandson, Diego, two, is too young to understand why his grandfather cannot walk or hear properly any more. Or why his family is slowly starving in this dusty camp, crammed four to a bed in a bare shack which floods whenever it rains.
It was six hours from here where Zuniga, 42, nearly lost her husband, Adolfo, after he trod on a landmine on their farm. “It was about 8am and he was outside working as usual when I heard a sound and went out to see what it was,” she says. “I found him about 10 minutes from the house, covered in blood, mud, burns and thorns from a nearby bush. Blood was pouring from his leg so I tied it as best as I could and ran for help.”
Frantic with fear, she found someone to drive her husband to hospital in Samaniego, where he was taken by ambulance to the Pasto hospital, a two-hour journey on rough mountain roads. “He was so bad I thought he was going to die,” says Zuniga.
Despite suffering three fractures to his leg, a severe bone infection and third-degree burns, Adolfo survived and did not need an amputation. But two and a half years on he is still unable to walk properly, has lost his land, is deaf in one ear and is plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder.
Today he is working on a farm three hours away where he labours occasionally but his wages are so meagre that he and his wife cannot afford to feed their family. “Today is market day but I have no money to buy anything for us to eat,” says Zuniga. “There are days when there is no food to cook. Our children have malnutrition. It is very difficult. It is horrible.”
Like Cordoba, Zuniga and her family have yet to receive compensation from the Colombian government. Unsurprisingly she feels abandoned by the authorities.
Gabriela Portillo, who co-ordinates Mercy Corps’ work in Narino and is a member of partner organisation, the Colombian Campaign Against Landmines, agrees much more could be done. “Many landmine survivors don’t know what their rights are and after leaving their homes they tend to keep moving, which makes them harder to trace,” she says. “The government is not looking for them because they want to show there is a reduction in the numbers of victims displaced by the conflict.”
The Colombian government has at least signed up to the international landmine ban treaty, and some progress has been made, but in the 10 years since the treaty came into force Colombia has suffered the world’s highest number of deaths and injuries caused by landmines almost every year. New figures show that in 2008 Afghanistan reported the most landmine casualties, with 992 people wounded or killed. Colombia was close behind, however, taking second place with 777 deaths or injuries.
The latest international conference assessing the treaty’s impact – held in Colombia last November – also highlighted poor progress on helping victims. Meanwhile the conflict and corruption across Colombia continue. A month ago a police station in Samaniego was bombed. Rebels were blamed, but there is widespread suspicion that the army also plants bombs to look as though they were left by guerrillas in order to justify the presence of soldiers. As if the people who live here need any further reminder, someone has scrawled the following message on the wall of a house on the outskirts of the town: “ELN presente.” The ELN is here.
For more information about the work of Mercy Corps in Colombia, including how to make a donation, visit www.mercycorps.org.uk.
Posted July 27, 2010 by Erin Gray
Aid agencies warn leaders not to risk Iraq's recovery
Edinburgh Evening News / The Scotsman website, 13 July 2010
A group of aid agencies, including Edinburgh-based Mercy Corps, has warned that if aid support from the EU and UK government for Iraq continues to fall, it could pose a serious risk to the country's recovery.
Mercy Corps was among 17 international and national NGOs to launch "Fallen Off the Agenda", highlighting the need for "more and better" aid for Iraq recovery.
The report highlighted that Iraq was still extremely fragile, yet attention and support was waning and budgets had been slashed.
Mervyn Lee, executive director of Mercy Corps, said: "Iraq is at a critical and difficult juncture, struggling to rebuild itself, and without enough of the right kind of support the country could once again unravel.
"Effective aid delivery and development assistance from the international community is still absolutely necessary to prevent that from happening.
"The international community have a moral obligation to make sure millions of Iraqis have a fighting chance for a stable, secure future."
Posted July 27, 2010 by Erin Gray
How your cash helped reclaim Haiti from the rubble
Edinburgh-based charity says thank you to everyone who gave time and money towards the earthquake relief
By Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News / The Scotsman website, 9 July 2010
Six months on from the devastating earthquake that shook Haiti, Mercy Corps has revealed how readers' donations have helped thousands of families.
The relief charity was on the scene within hours and a major Evening News-backed campaign raised more than £400,000 from readers. Today the charity's director of fund-raising praised the efforts of the people of Edinburgh for six months of support and revealed what has been done.
"Imagine how difficult it would be trying to run Edinburgh when all of the MSPs, councillors, and police were living in tents because their houses and offices had crumbled to the ground," says Sciennes-based charity fund-raiser John Cunningham.
"The Capital would be gone and the whole country would fall apart. There would be no food, no water, dead people piling up...and nowhere to turn for help."
This was exactly the scenario facing relief charity Mercy Corps when they landed in Haiti six months ago in the wake of the devastating earthquake.
Within hours the charity had boots on the ground offering instant aid to thousands of people, and setting up bases that would help in the reconstruction in the months ahead.
"We wouldn't have been able to do it without the support the readers of the Edinburgh Evening News," said Mr Cunningham, director of fund-raising at the charity.
Residents in the Capital raised more than £430,000 in the first six months of the Evening News-backed appeal, with more than half of the money spent already on Mercy Corps ongoing projects.
With the money raised Mercy Corps has been able to provide:
- 862,500 gallons of clean water, representing approximately a one-month supply for 7,255 people.
- 315 tonnes of food representing a month's supply of food to 5,500 families or 33,000 individuals.
- Two-week rations of rice for 5,000 families, benefiting 25,000 individuals.
- A one-month supply of food for 1,000 patients at Port-au-Prince General Hospital.
- 68,000 packages of high-energy biscuits.
- Tarpaulin to 1,535 families to improve camp shelters.
- Income to 5,960 families through cash-for-work scheme (12,000 families by September)
- Hygiene kits to 3,450 families.
- 114 temporary latrines.
- 9,660 tools — such as wheelbarrows, shovels, and sledgehammers.
Mr Cunningham said: "I deliberately didn't go out there myself as it became clear that we needed someone to stay behind to coordinate the massive fund-raising effort."
However, programme officer Carrie Beaumont, 29, from Granton, was one of the people sent out. She fed regular reports back to headquarters, and the picture she painted was grim.
"All the schools in the city came down and many thousands of people were crushed," said Mr Cunningham. "We worked closely with the United Nations (UN] but they were badly affected. Their offices collapsed and they lost a large number of their staff."
In the early days of the relief effort many non-governmental organisations (NGOs] were criticised for a reportedly poorly coordinated response to the crisis.
However, Mr Cunningham said that - from the Mercy Corps' point of view at least - this lack of coordination was a symptom of the chaos that the country was in rather than a failing of the aid effort.
Mr Cunningham is full of praise for the people of Edinburgh, who rallied round their locally-based charity to help.
"There was an instant response," he said. "Personal donations came rolling in, and we had six people manning the phones six days a week. Amongst the biggest responses we received was from local schools. We put together a Power Point presentation for schools showing photographs about the earthquake, and what we did to help.
"The most interesting questions we got back was from primary school children, who are a lot less reserved than secondary schools so their questions came from the heart. They asked questions like: 'Where are they living now?'; 'What do they have to eat?' and; 'Have any of them lost their arms and legs?', personal questions that many adults might be too sensitive to ask.
"Six months on, the mood in Haiti is resolute. It was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and before the earthquake many people were depressed and frustrated at the state that the country was in, but now they see it as an opportunity to rebuild the country."
Mr Cunningham pulls out a copy of Mercy Corps six-month report, and points to a quote by 23-year-old displaced student Moïse Mackendy. "Before the earthquake I was disappointed with how things were going in Haiti, but now I understand I must be one of the people who will make Haiti different."
Posted January 27, 2010 by Ross Hornsey
Mercy Corps aid means first hot food for survivors
By Laura Cummings and Sue Gyford
Edinburgh Evening News, January 26, 2010
SURVIVORS of the devastating Haiti earthquake have enjoyed their first hot meal since before the disaster struck.
The emergency response team from Edinburgh-based charity Mercy Corps delivered more than 20 tons of non-perishable food items to the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince on Saturday.
Rice, beans, corn soya-blend flour, vegetable oil, sugar and salt will feed 1,000 patients, their families and staff for two weeks.
Mercy Corps spokesman Ross Hornsey said: "Thankfully it turned out the kitchens were still operational so the people there can start getting hot meals.
"The psychological boost you get from getting a hot meal like this is very important, but it's also vital in terms of health and nutrition – particularly for those recovering from very serious injuries."
The team will also supply basic hygiene kits to patients and their families at the General Hospital, as well as the Haitian Community Hospital, over the next few days.
Meanwhile, Oxfam aid worker Kenny Rae, who grew up in Clermiston, arrived in Haiti on Tuesday to help locals affected by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake earlier this month.
The 54-year-old is camping with nine others in the Delmas area, and is working 16 hours a day with sporadic communications links and basic water supplies.
The former St Augustine's High School pupil said: "I've been to Gaza, and to Pakistan after the earthquake, and Bangladesh after the cyclone, and this is the worst I've ever seen.
"Whole neighbourhoods have been razed. Substantial buildings that you'd expect to survive have been levelled. The level of health care is very poor – most of the health facilities were destroyed and hospitals have no water."
Mr Rae, who left Edinburgh around 20 years ago and now lives in Boston, is working with Oxfam Quebec and plans to stay in Haiti for at least three months. His job is to help set up toilets.
Mr Rae, a father-of-one, said: "There are thousands of bodies under buildings. Many of the buildings are like pancakes, so it's impossible to remove bodies without tearing the building down.
"People are still searching, not so much for family members but for possessions – you see whole families going through the rubble of their houses."
He added: "Yesterday in one of the small camps and this little girl came up to us crying. She tugged my colleague's trouser leg and said, 'I don't have a house, can you give me a new house?'.
"It will take a generation to get over this."
Posted January 27, 2010 by Ross Hornsey
Quake children's trauma help
By Laura Cummings
Edinburgh Evening News, January 25, 2010
CHARITY staff trained in psychosocial treatment have arrived in Haiti to help child survivors of the earthquake overcome their trauma.
Around a dozen staff members from Mercy Corps reached in Haiti on Saturday to provide post-disaster help to Haitian children using Comfort for Kids, a methodology which combines a psychosocial training workshop for adults with an interactive workbook that helps children tell their story of the disaster. It will help up to 100,000 young earthquake survivors.
Executive director at Mercy Corps' European HQ in Edinburgh, Mervyn Lee, said: "Children in the earthquake zone are in desperate need of emotional help. They have lost parents, friends and homes. Their worlds have fallen apart. Unlike adults, children do not have the experience or judgement to process that kind of trauma by themselves."
Mr Lee warned that children could be affected by depression, aggression and other long-term problems if the "emotional scars" of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti earlier this month are left untreated. As part of the programme, children will also receive "comfort kits", containing soothing items such as blankets, stuffed animals and books.
The specially-trained staff will train local parents, teachers and doctors in Haiti, among others, to talk to children about the disaster and address difficult questions concerning death and grieving. They hope to start training, which will be conducted in both French and Creole, early in February.
Mr Lee added: "The sooner we can start the better. Helping children now promotes short-term recovery, and will allow these children to be part of Haiti's future."
Comfort for Kids was first developed by Mercy Corps and Bright Horizons – a global workplace childcare provider – after 9/11, to help the emotional recovery of children in New York City.
It has subsequently assisted thousands of children in post- disaster environments, including the severe earthquake in China's Sichuan province in 2008.
On Thursday, Mercy Corps delivered three days' worth of high-energy biscuits to 900 patients, families and staff at Port-au-Prince's largest hospital, General Hospital.
Mercy Corps emergency responder, Carol Ward, said: "People were relieved and happy to see us. Hospital officials told us they've been very short on food. The people who received the biscuit package immediately started eating – you could tell they were hungry."
The aid agency's team plans to return to the hospital in the coming days to deliver food such as rice, beans and oil that could be cooked on site if the kitchens are functional, or can be repaired.
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