Lisa Hoashi's blog

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Before I call it a night, a quick update from our partner Peace Winds in Japan. I didn't get a hold of Tomoko until about 12:30 P.M. her time, which was 8:30 P.M. for me.

The time difference is jarring. As I am about to call it a night, Tomoko is getting her day underway. When I asked her what the team's plan was for today, it was simple: just find food and supplies to fill the two helicopters they plan to send up north. But that task is becoming more and more of a challenge in Tokyo, where stores are beginning to empty. It would entail a lot of calls, persistence, persuading, running around.

On top of that, the nuclear crisis at Fukushima is still ongoing. Tokyo still lies out of the danger zone for radiation, but many people there are very concerned.

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Today I've been corresponding with Rieko, who has been a good friend of my mother's since I was a kid. We met Rieko when she and her family lived in Beaverton years ago, but now she and her family are back in Tokyo. I sent her an email to say how glad I was to hear that she and her family were safe after the earthquake, and that I was thinking of them during this worsening nuclear crisis. She said that indeed, people were becoming more concerned about the situation at Fukushima, even as far as Tokyo.

Her last email to me ended on the following single, simple sentiment. "Thank you for your prayers," she wrote. "And could you keep praying for us and also those who are suffering under this hard situation?"

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The lone Neena Sasaki, 5, striding down a path of complete wreckage, her pink bag full of remaining family belongings, her mouth turned down in sadness but her face set in striking resolve. She looks mightier than all the soldiers behind her.

This photograph says it all to me. Complete and utter bravery in the face of unimaginable devastation.

Sending much love to Japan. Was just on a call with Tomoko of Peace Winds in Tokyo, our partner on the ground. It's morning there, and she is at the office figuring out what all is going on today. She reported that vans are leaving for the north to make more deliveries of tents, food, and a few mobile phones for evacuees to use to get in touch with their families. They also were able to find some fuel. Supplies are getting scarce though, she said. They had to call all over Tokyo for fuel. They couldn't find water.

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This morning, as I was getting ready for work — before I'd switched on NPR — I was thinking about how I wanted to tell my aunt that I'd like to go with her to Japan this year. She has been wanting to go for a visit for some time now, before she's not able to travel any more, but hasn't had someone to go with. I'm fourth-generation Japanese American, so our family only has distant ties to our Japanese relatives, and it would be an important trip for both me and my aunt to keep those connections.

And then, I turned on the radio to hear that an 8.9-magnitude quake had hit off the shore of Japan. A tragic turn to the thoughts of Japan I'd had just minutes before, replaced now by worry for all of those there who found themselves in panic, their lives upended.

Now at my desk at Mercy Corps' headquarters, all around me there's buzz — phones ringing, impromptu meetings, discussions — as my colleagues determine what our Japan response will be. We just decided that we will support the emergency response of a local partner on the ground, Peace Winds Japan. Now our fundraisers are hard at work to raise money for these efforts.

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This past year I found myself in the middle of a culture clash. It wasn't because I went to Haiti for the first time – though that did happen too. It was because Mercy Corps wanted to help bring first-of-its-kind mobile technology to Haiti. And I found myself thinking: Why?

I was new on the job of reporting back on Mercy Corps’ progress on helping Haitians recover from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that all but destroyed Port-au-Prince and killed thousands of people.

And I started to hear about this new initiative that we'd started up, to use mobile phones to deliver humanitarian aid – specifically cash – to families struggling to survive.

On principle, I thought, introducing mobile technology to deliver aid to Haiti was a great idea. But, I wondered, was it the right time for us to invest time and resources toward bringing something brand new to Haiti, when instead we could just focus on delivering services there in the safer, tried-and-true kind of way?

Regardless – our mobile money initiative moved forward, in partnership with cellphone company Voila and Haitian bank Unibank, and in large part due to the heroic efforts of project manager Kokoevi Sossouvi. She, in turn, was wholeheartedly backed by our leadership.

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A few days ago, I went out to the Mojapta displacement camp, where Mercy Corps is providing clean water and sanitation to families, to ask earthquake survivors about their experiences today — and of the last year.

Gilberte Jean, 23

Gilberte has been living in the camp since right after the earthquake. She used to live nearby in her mother's house. There are only two rooms in that house and one was destroyed during the earthquake. "It's not really livable," she says. Though she does go back to sleep there at night with her family. "It's safer to stay together." She doesn't know when the family will be able to rebuild the house, but they hope to.

Me: How has this year been for you?

"All of this is strange and difficult," she says. "It hasn't been pleasant spending all day in a tent. That only guarantees one thing: a headache. Cholera scares me. There have been no cases here, but some of my family members have had it." They recovered from it fortunately.

"I used to go to school," Gilberte says. "But after January 12, I haven't been able to. I also miss the stability of living at home all together with my family. It was important, and now that we aren't all together, it's difficult."

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