Livelihoods

Hassan Sabri and another local fisherman in southern Iraq bring in their catch with nets donated by Mercy Corps, which enabled them to restart their business — and their livelihoods.

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Twenty-year-old Nyasha Zulu and 21-year-old Simbarashe Mudara have lived most of their lives in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza, 30 kilometers from Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. The town has no major industries to speak of, and so youths such as Nyasha and Simbarashe often spend time engaging in risky behaviour.

Vocational education students in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe who recently received start-up kits from Mercy Corps. Photo: Richard Nyamanhindi/Mercy Corps

Now, thanks to Mercy Corps — under the Non-Governmental Organisation Joint Initiative for Urban Zimbabwe (JI) — they have been able to receive vocational training to help them begin their own small businesses and make better choices about their lives.

Implemented by Mercy Corps in 2008, the vocational training programme has been assisting more than 300 youths in Chitungwiza. The youths are drawn mainly from vulnerable and poor households in the town to access vocational training opportunities.

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Hassan Sabri and another local fisherman in southern Iraq bring in their catch with nets donated by Mercy Corps, which enabled them to restart their business — and their livelihoods. Photo: Adnan Ali/Mercy Corps

Hassan Sabri is a 33-year-old fisherman, and one of the beneficiaries of a recently-completed Mercy Corps Iraq livelihoods project. Our team provided nets to poverty-stricken fishermen in Al Bihar sub-district, which is located 90 kilometers away from the southern city of Basra.

In the last year, Hassan’s nets tore due to frequent use, and he lacked the income to replace them. Although he tried his best to continue fishing, he eventually gave up and began looking for another job. When he couldn't find any work, he fell sad and weak.

With the new nets that Mercy Corps supplied it to the poor fishermen, Hassan's eyes glowed with happiness. Hope began to shine again on his face and in his life. He was finally able to resume work and contribute to his family’s livelihood.

The very day after he received his new nets — they day I visited — Hassan rowed out onto the river in the very early hours of morning. He immediately threw his nets into river and patiently waited for the haul he'd missed for so long.

As he came back to his family with a large number of fish, he thanked our Community Action Programme for their assistance to the residents of Bihar village, who rely heavily on fishing just like he does.

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A young boy walks through the cramped, crowded quarters of a Jakarta slum. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

The slums of Jakarta, Indonesia are home to some of the poorest families in Asia. The city — one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, with more than 28 million people — has dozens of such places, where thousands of people live cramped in close quarters. In these neighborhoods, you'll find nearly every urban challenge imaginable, from poor sanitation and insufficient water supply to precarious building codes.

But one of the biggest problems in Jakarta's many slums is child malnutrition. Most residents of these neighborhoods don't have kitchens or cooking supplies to prepare their own meals, so they purchase cheap street food that is usually high in fat and sugar, but low in protein and nutrients. As a result of this poor diet, at least 17 percent of children throughout the city suffer from acute malnutrition, as well as anemia and stunted growth. That percentage is much higher in the slum neighborhoods where poor families are concentrated.

Another problem that plagues Jakarta's poorest areas is unemployment. Many families in the slums are migrants from other areas of the country, unsuccessfully trying to find work in this fast-paced Asian capital. Some estimates put unemployment rates in poor neighborhoods at more than 30 percent.

A solution on the streets

Both of these problems — malnutrition and unemployment — are being directly addressed by a Mercy Corps programme that helps food cart vendors dish out healthy food to children.

Mercy Corps launched Kedai Balitaku (KeBAL) — which translates as My Child’s Café in the Indonesian language — as a pilot programme in 2009. Its initial focus was twofold: address the failing health of children in some of Jakarta's most impoverished neighborhoods through affordable, healthy food while providing job opportunities for area cooks and food cart vendors. Mercy Corps brought in a nutritionist to create an inexpensive yet nutritious menu that would appeal to families' tastes and budgets, and we worked with an advertising agency to develop colourful carts and music that would attract the attention of Indonesian children.

Gunanto sells bubur ayam — chicken porridge with vegetables — to a regular customer while making friendly conversation. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

But the bottom line was that all this healthy eating and job creation had to be self-sustaining. So KeBAL's philosophy is that — after initial training in nutrition standards, hygiene, bookkeeping, marketing and customer service — each food cart operation would become a profitable, vendor-owned micro franchise. This philosophy has not only worked, but it's become incredibly successful: demand for KeBAL food has far outpaced supply in the eight neighborhoods where the project launched. Altogether, vendors report serving more than 5,000 regular customers every day — and averaging 30 percent profit margins on their products.

Better pay and healthy options

One such vendor, 32-year-old Gunanto, used to earn as little as 30,000 Indonesian rupiah (about US$3) doing occasional jobs such as pushing a pedicab for as many as 15 hours per day. Today, he's making at least £21 a week — enough to send his children to school and provide for all his family's needs. He also has a much shorter workday.

Diana feeds her baby daughter healthy rice, chicken and vegetable porridge she bought from Gunanto. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Gunanto's food cart is providing a valuable service to mothers like 31-year-old Diana and her baby daughter Aurelia. Diana is able to buy bubur ayam — rice porridge with vegetables — for Aurelia for only 2,000 Indonesian rupiah (about £0). Before this, she was often relying on less healthy street food to meet her family's needs. She says that not only is Aurelia staying healthier, but she also prefers the taste of Gunanto's porridge to most any other food available in the neighborhood.

Having established a market niche during the pilot programme stage, Mercy Corps' next step is to scale it up and include even more parts of the city — and, as a result, engage more families and entrepreneurs. Our goal is to reach 500,000 Indonesian children through this independently-owned and operated micro franchising model. We're gearing up to expand the programme to 31 cooking centers and almost 250 vendors.

KeBAL is a classic example of Mercy Corps' entrepreneurial, crisis-to-opportunity approach. By creatively addressing the pressing issues of malnutrition and unemployment in Jakarta's poorest neighborhoods, we've established a sustainable model that will not only better nourish local families, but also provide reliable income for other pressing household needs.

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In a part of the country often forgotten by the central government, southern Iraq has had its share of challenges following years of conflict that began with the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Communities need government support for projects that they identify as high priority, such as rehabilitation of hospitals, health centers and schools, construction of bridges, and battling high rates of unemployment.

Khamaeal Hussein in her beauty shop in Shatt Al Arab district, southern Iraq. Photo: Mercy Corps Iraq

A lack of opportunities is one major factor for unemployment. But an entrepreneurial spirit still exists.

Khamaeal Hussein lives in a small neighborhood in Shatt Al Arab district, in Basra governorate. She is 29 years old and participated in a Mercy Corps-funded project last year: a hairdressing and makeup training for 20 women in her district. It was a small project, lasting a month, with professional lectures and supplies provided for the participants.

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View of Georgia's Samtskhe-Javakheti Region. Photo: Justin Cruanes

My cab driver was yelling something that sounded like "khows, khows!" I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about until I saw the spotted figures in the distance and realized he was saying "cows."

I had asked the driver what people in the area do for a living. "Livestock agriculture," he said. We chatted a bit in what little words we had in common as I made my way to visit some Mercy Corps programmes in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region.

In Georgia, cows are something worth shouting about— particularly in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region, where agriculture is the main economic activity. However, 67 percent of the population lives in poverty and farmers struggle due to ethnic discrimination, small production capabilities, low quality goods and an inability to participate in market activities. Having 20 cows on hand makes little difference when you have no place to properly refrigerate the milk they produce. Furthermore, if farmers can’t store milk, they can’t age cheese, and fresh cheese is of much lower value than if let to age a bit.

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Marudin, a local farmer who received tools and seeds from Mercy Corps, thinks the results from the corn harvest are encouraging. Photo: Iswanto JA/Mercy Corps

Indonesia's Mentawai Islands have a very hot and arid climate but, because of high rainfall and minimal pests, it is great for agriculture. When the tsunami hit last October, Mentawai residents ran from the waves with only the clothes on their backs. Most tools and crops were lost.

Through separate but collaborative programmes, Mercy Corps has distributed 559 Farmer Toolkits through funding from USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). We've also given farmers 565 packs of corn, chilli, eggplant, watermelon, cucumber and green bean seeds — as well as 150,000 cacao seedlings — through the generosity of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As you enter Kinumbuk, Bulasat village on Pagai Selatan (South Pagai Island), the air becomes cool. Each temporary shelter belonging to a tsunami-displaced family is nearly covered with a leafy and shady corn crop. Not far from the house there are also cacao, pepper, eggplant and cucumber seedlings that are beginning to grow.

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A water buffalo in Myanmar’s Delta region. Cyclone Nargis killed more than 90 percent of the region's buffalo; Mercy Corps is helping farming families buy buffalo and get back on track.

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During the eight-hour drive from Yangon to Myanmar’s Delta region, I’d seen lots of beautiful water buffalo hanging out in mud by the side of the dirt roads, flicking their ears lazily. Farmers across the delta rely on them to help plough their land, so they’re a common sight.

A water buffalo in Myanmar’s Delta region. Cyclone Nargis killed more than 90 percent of the region's buffalo; Mercy Corps is helping farming families buy buffalo and get back on track. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

From inside the truck, I’d decided the buffalo were adorable. But standing right next to an extremely grumpy pair the following morning, they seemed rather less cute, and their horns considerably bigger (and much pointier).

The buffalo belonged to Aye Myint, a 53-year-old farmer who lives in Tha Pyay Kwin village in Myanmar with his wife and two children. He told me he grows rice and breeds chickens on his small eight-acre farm, using the two buffalo he bought at a buffalo market arranged by Mercy Corps last year.

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Mercy Corps' Malka Older (second from left) stands with the Peace Winds team, local officials and Ofunato fish market staff as they commemorate the market's re-opening. Photo: Mao Sato/Peace Winds

The tsunami poured through the Ofunato fish market, leaving the open-plan structure mostly intact but washing away almost everything within it. The narrow corridor of offices overlooking the selling space of the market shows plenty of evidence that the wave flooded up to the top of that high second floor: panels fallen or straggling off of the ceiling, empty shelves where wooden shrines used to be, an extremely grimy and unsalvageable photocopy machine.

On the floor below, though, the market is full of activity and trade. Mercy Corps and Peace Winds Japan helped revive the fish market by replacing the basic equipment needed to off-load and sell fish – plastic tanks, weighing scales, small forklifts, an electricity generator – as well as some of the basics for running a business, like the photocopy machine. Now one of the highest-volume ports in northeast Japan is again able to receive the catch from trawlers and fishing boats, and local fish sellers are able to get back into business as well.

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