Sat, Nov 21, 2009
Hello Anonymous! | Sign Out
| Account Settings
|
Rate This Blog
 0 rating(s)
Categories
• care
• poverty • Burundi • Guatemala • Niger • change • empowerment • women • Christy Turlington • Tribeca Film Festival • Myanmar • Cyclone • Disaster • Relief • Christy Turlington Burns • Food • Aid • Food Aid • USAID • Eric Harr • Antoinette Kudoto • Ghana • CARE National Conference • Senator Menendez • Education • Jeffrey Sachs • Advocacy • Smart Power • Maternal Health • Senator Casey • Emergency Supplemental • Deesha Dyer • Nicaragua • Cambodia • elections • HIV-AIDS • India • Ecuador • Ethiopia • Cote d'Ivoire • Nepal • children • Zambia • Lesotho • Kenya • Dr. Helene Gayle • Malawi • VSL • Phil Borges • microfinance • girls • Haiti • Somalia • drought • Africa • government • fuel • Sierra Leone • Nairobi • Climate Change • Poznan • post-Kyoto frame • CDM • Kyoto protocol • Honduras • Adaptation • indigenous peoples • famine • Gaza • emergency • Election Day • Mexico City Policy • Indonesia • Vietnam • Earthquake
Archives
• Current Entries
• October 2009 • August 2009 • July 2009 • June 2009 • May 2009 • March 2009 • February 2009 • January 2009 • December 2008 • November 2008 • October 2008 • September 2008 • August 2008 • July 2008 • June 2008 • May 2008 • April 2008
Latest Entries
Loading...
|
Notes from the Field
Can't We Do More?
Blog by Rick Perera, Media Officer, CARE International in Pakistan: I visit CARE’s warehouse here in the capital. Most of the relief items in stock have already been distributed, and we are desperately seeking funds to replenish them. Seeing the half-empty storage space brings home the challenges of addressing an emergency of such vast scope.The few remaining boxes of kitchen sets, hygiene kits, water canisters and mosquito nets are concrete reminders of the urgent human needs. But packages are not people. I am anxious to go to the sites where IDPs have taken refuge -- chiefly among host families and communities, but also in tented camps. The sheer scale of this disaster is hard to imagine, and the written reports from our colleagues in northwestern Pakistan can’t begin to capture what these people are suffering. I want to meet them for myself, shake their hands, and try to understand what they are going through. But for now, as reports of ongoing violence continue to cross my computer screen, I’m not going anywhere. This weekend a suicide bomb struck in Islamabad, just 3 kilometers from the CARE staff residence where I am staying. Debris flew across a wall into the yard of a local colleague. Luckily, he and his family were out at the time. Our security officer, Khalid, is very strict about limiting staff movements -- trips out of town are out of the question, for now. “A dead aid worker is of no use to anyone,” he says with a wry smile. In any case, I can accomplish more here at headquarters, helping get the financial and administrative details in place as quickly as possible for a huge logistical effort. Better to let the local staff and partner agencies, who know the terrain and can keep a lower profile, do the work on the ground. It’s strange to be so close to such a monumental catastrophe, and yet so far removed. I can only hope that people around the world feel what I do: an urgent need to help our neighbors in need, whether they’re in the next town or on the other side of our little planet.
Send This | Categories:
|
