Posts Tagged ‘Asia’
Photojournalist David Snyder is traveling in India for CRS. Here’s a dispatch David sent this morning.
September 5, 2008
New Delhi, India Nearly a week now in India visiting CRS projects here in Delhi and further south in Mumbai. I’ve been to India several times, but each time I’m overwhelmed by this place – by the sheer crush of humanity that India bears. A simple drive through the noisy, crowded cities here is a burst of sensory overload – the horns and pollution, the wealth of the rich and the incredible weight of urban poverty.
On his return to India, photojournalist David Snyder finds the country still impresses visitors with rich sensory experiences. Photo by David Snyder for CRS
It is that poverty that has given rise to the burgeoning HIV rate in India, where the government estimates that 2.4 million people are infected with HIV. While the number might seem low in a country with more than one billion inhabitants, India is ripe for the spread of the virus as it transmits among the poor migrant workers who still comprise the bulk of India’s labor force.
This week I spent time with CRS beneficiaries who are receiving all manner of care and support through CRS partners, reaching out to provide educational and nutritional support to kids living with HIV, and physical and psychosocial care for adults who are infected with the virus. On Tuesday I went out with a group of staff from CRS partner agency Karunya Trust as they put on a street performance for people in a local slum, hundreds of which rise up amid the cities of India. Their performance, delivered to the laughs of the many who gathered in the crowded alleyway, reminded me of those I’d seen in Africa so many times during the years I lived there – a raucous performance of comedy with a serious message of HIV awareness at its heart.
CRS programming here is as varied as the country itself. Here in New Delhi I visited a CRS partner who is working with a transgender community – men who have undergone surgeries to be women, and now live in shadowy communities where they earn money through dance and performance, and live high-risk lifestyles that leave them extremely vulnerable to HIV. Wednesday I met a group of HIV positive women who with CRS help are starting their own business making Nutrition Powder – a vitamin-packed mix used by a CRS partner agency as part of their HIV nutrition program. Rather than buy the product from an outside provider, they now buy directly from the women themselves, ensuring their own supply of the product and providing regular income for the group members.
There was talk of my going up north to document CRS’ response to the disastrous flooding that hit the state of Bihar this week. But I am off tomorrow to see some CRS programs in Bangladesh, a country I’ve never before been to. So, we’ll see what I find there.
David Snyder
Posted
September 5th, 2008 in
Asia, HIV and AIDS by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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After almost three weeks since a dam break in Nepal sent floodwaters into the neighboring state of Bihar, India, reports from the field say damage from flooding is getting worse.
“Essentially, a river exists now in areas where it didn’t before.”
That quote from Catholic Relief Service’s country representative in India, Jennifer Poidatz, hints at the devastation that has forced about 2.6 million people to evacuate their homes.
We expect more updates from India and Nepal soon. We’ll post alerts on the blog as information becomes available.
Posted
September 4th, 2008 in
Asia, Bihar, Emergency Response, flood, India, Nepal by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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CNN spoke with CRS country representative Jennifer Poidatz and regional information officer Caroline Brennan on the flooding in northeastern India. The story reports on aid workers struggling to bring help to an area facing “some of the worst floods in generations“.
Posted
September 3rd, 2008 in
Asia, Bihar, Emergency Response, Flooding, India, Nepal by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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Meulaboh, Indonesia August 30, 2008
David Snyder for CRS
I am beginning a trip with Catholic Relief Services in what has become familiar ground for me since December 2004 - Indonesia’s Aceh Province, which was devastated by the Asian tsunami. I was here originally in May 2005 to see how people were getting on, nearly six months after the massive wave struck. Tens of thousands of Indonesians were killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Coming up now on four years since that disaster, this is a very different place than it was when I was last here in 2007. Everywhere, homes, roads, mosques and schools have been rebuilt. Villages destroyed by the tsunami have risen again, many of them in new locations, as much of the land in the original village sites was permanently flooded following the tsunami.
Having been in Asia in the days and weeks after that disaster, and having followed the progress of areas like Aceh, I know first hand what role CRS played in that genesis.
Here in Meulaboh alone, one of the largest cities in the hard-hit Aceh Province, CRS built 2,657 permanent homes – sheltering more than 13,000 people. I spent this week with them, and heard firsthand what a difference those homes have made. Perhaps most telling of the time I spent with those beneficiaries was the response I got repeatedly when I asked how they would have rebuilt had they not had help from CRS. Everyone just laughed. “Impossible,” they said simply.
Having worked for years as a staff member with CRS, four of them serving on the agency’s Emergency Response Team, I have seen many disasters around the world. I wish I could show each person who supported agencies responding to the tsunami just how much of an impact their money has had here in Meulaboh. It has been a fascinating experience to see that change evolve over the last four years.
I am off now to India to photograph CRS efforts there to combat the spread of HIV, which now infects as many as 5.5 million people in India. From there I head to Bangladesh, and then on to Bosnia, visiting CRS projects in each country. I will post more to the blog along the way, so stay tuned.
Posted
September 2nd, 2008 in
Asia, Emergency Response, tsunami by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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Photo by Dave Snyder for CRS
Wrapping up the second week of my time with CRS here in Cambodia. Spent this week visiting partners conducting HIV and AIDS support, as well as health projects targeting tuberculosis and water and sanitation. After seven years living in Africa, I am well familiar with the impact of HIV in poor countries. Despite that, I still find it hard to convey the real scale and scope of that impact, especially in a country like Cambodia, which has such limited health care capacity. What that means in real terms are hospitals that don’t have mattresses on the metal frames of their beds, or in many cases even basic medications. Often, the family members of those who are hospitalized live on the hospital grounds, cooking meals they themselves purchase, depleting already-limited family resources.
Much of what I saw this week with CRS were efforts to address that directly – providing support to the hospitals and health centers that are faced daily with Cambodia’s HIV patients. I spent time with community volunteers who refer people directly from the communities and follow up – daily in some cases – with home based care. I met a Community Health Volunteer who dispenses TB drugs – one each day for eight months – to a TB patient in his village to make sure she is cured without passing it on, or making it resistant to drugs by missing dosages. I met a grandmother who lost not only her own husband to AIDS, but also three of her five grown children – as much an indication as any of impact of the virus in some parts of Cambodia.
I think what always strikes me most about the people who volunteer to help fight AIDS in small communities like those I visited this week is their dedication. They receive no pay, and yet still spend hours each day in many cases caring for others in their communities – others often avoided or shunned by poorly informed villagers. It is selfless work, and it’s making a difference for many here.
Posted
July 11th, 2008 in
Asia, HIV and AIDS by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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It’s my first time in Cambodia, and I am interested to see more of it. We started out the week down south, visiting beneficiaries who had received small grants to start up or expand agricultural businesses, like selling tree seedlings or digging ponds to hold year-round supplies of wild fish. I’ve seen lots of similar development projects over the years, and I know they work. Poor people in most developing countries know how to make money – they just don’t have access to the startup capital they need to do it. A grant of $50 is all the start-up many people need to begin earning a viable income.
Photo by dave Snyder for CRS
Mid-week we headed west to visit the Chambok ecotourism site, near the Kirirom National Park, which you can find in most guidebooks. What you may not be able to find is more information about the Chambok site – more than 1,200 hectares of lush forest, and a still fledgling effort by locals to earn their living by preserving the forest – a new concept in much of impoverished Cambodia, where natural resources are often quickly consumed out of necessity. With CRS help, the communities within the Chambok site are working to draw tourists from both inside and outside Cambodia. Through entrance fees, guide services, accommodation and food sales, the community is working to sustain itself, and preserve the environment. It’s amazing how much of an impact even a few tourist dollars can make. Entrance fees are $3 for foreigners - .25 cents for Cambodians – and a night of accommodation in the home of a local, who like all at the site shares in the profits, is another $3. Having seen so much environmental destruction in much of the developing world, where resources are often seen only as quick cash or cooking fuel, it was a delight to see people working hard to save what they do have, and support themselves in the process. We all benefit from such efforts. I’d encourage you to learn more about the Chambok group at www.geocities.com/chambokcbet
Back in Phnom Penh tonight, and heading out Sunday for more projects. Fitting on this night to see fireworks over the city. I don’t know where they are coming from, but it’s nice to be reminded of home.
Posted
July 7th, 2008 in
Asia by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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A flooded neighborhood. Photo by Ryan Russell/CRS
Ryan Russell, CRS’ regional technical advisor for emergencies in the Asia Pacific region, wrote from Mindanao, Philippines, where he is working with staff and partners to carry out emergency relief for thousands of families who have been uprooted and devastated by Typhoon Frank:
In Mindanao, conditions in the camps are dire, with 12 to 15 families (up to 90 people) taking shelter in each classroom, and abysmal sanitation, sometimes none at all. While people are making their way home, there are still around 4,500 families whose homes are underwater, and it is not clear when they will be able to go back. It could be a few weeks or months since some major dikes and dams broke, and rivers have changed course.
For those going home, most have lost the crops they had just planted. Many were already having difficulties feeding their families and were dependent on government-subsized food, all brought on the last few months by a doubling in food prices, such as rice.
People are desperately in need of seed and tools if they are going to be able to feed their families down the road. Most took loans to plant what they just lost at an interest rate of 10 percent a month, and will still have to pay that back. A lot of the fields are covered in mud and sand, which will take weeks or months to repair before planting can occur.
Posted
June 27th, 2008 in
Asia, Emergency Response by:
jrivera |
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Dear Friends,
After 45 days of hectic work, the Church and its group of committed volunteers take a pause from the long journey of rebuilding our people’s lives to express our deep gratitude to all of you who stood by us and the people of Myanmar in their hour of darkness.
Thousands are returning home, or where their home used to be. Children return to school, knowing some of their friends will not be here. Farmers are returning to a slowly healing land, wounded by the marauding sea on that fateful day. The Ayeyawady River is subdued into serenity after straddling killer waves and exhibiting dead bodies for a month.
It has been a heavy month for the Church. In Dedeya, Fr. Benedict and his group valiantly buried dead bodies, exposed to sun and rain for a month. It is a challenging work, for days together, many villages were a valley of bones, and now they are rested with dignity in a place. Elsewhere the caregivers, our volunteers, faced threats to their own physical and psychological health, living amidst contaminated water and rotting bodies. Some have to be carried back to Yangon for medical attention.
All the parishes have been turned into disaster response teams. Food and non-food items are distributed through them. Many times the Buddhist monks are fellow sojourners in this act of mercy. Just a month ago, no family had wish or wherewithal to send their children [to school]. This month, with our support for uniforms, books and fee, hundreds of children are returning to the school. This return is healing and is the first signs of life to the battered communities. Hundreds of temporary shelters are coming up. Seeds are distributed. The Church is designing a healing process through psycho-spiritual training and trauma healing services.
The nightmare is slowly replaced with hope. The Catholic Bishops Conference of Myanmar (CBCM), all the religious and faithful, Karuna (national Caritas) and the Caritas International reiterate their commitment. We thank all of you at this juncture. Our work has been very challenging, done under great restrictions on access. But you all made our work rewarding by standing by us with your great fellowship. Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI evinced fatherly concern from the day one. He mourned with the Myanmar Bishops when they met him for their ‘ad limina’ visit. His Delegate Archbishop Salvatore Pennachio rushed in by the first plane available and personally interacted with the survivors and the caregivers all through these days. The churches from various nations contributed their mite and prayers to our work.
It has been a month of pain and sorrow for our people. But the tide is turning, because people like you felt their pain from far and rushed with assistance. The Church could save lives because of you. On behalf of those thousands who survived we owe a deep debt of gratitude to all of you. Once again we realize that the Universal Church is a mother who reaches out where there is a tear, a human brokenness.
It is still a long journey. The full recovery will take at least two years. Cyclone Nargis was nature’s nuclear attack on our people. There are villages destroyed without any trace. The farm lands are polluted with the sea water. The human asset is diluted, social assets destroyed, natural assets mutilated with wanton destruction. The poor of Myanmar, already handicapped by some of the worst permanent disasters, are crawling back to normalcy.
So our journey continues. The urgent needs are for setting up homes, shelter and regenerating the livelihoods through supply of seeds to farmers, encouraging micro enterprises. This has been a month of challenge, but a blessed challenge because we felt the power of human oneness, the unstinted support of the Mother Church and great generosity of human sprit among Myanmar’s people through their selfless service to their suffering brothers and sisters.
Our heartfelt thanks to every one of you,
In Solidarity,
Archbishop Charles Bo, S.D.B.
Posted
June 27th, 2008 in
Asia, cyclone nargis, Emergency Response, myanmar by:
jrivera |
1 Comment »
A letter from Archbishop Charles Bo of Myanmar:
As the waters raged in the predominantly Christian village, the monks from the nearby monastery were on the noble mission of saving people. A monk swam across the currents to pull out a woman who was about to be dragged by the marauding river. In the far off Phyapon, where Church workers linked to Caritas Internationalis were distributing aid to the survivors, they choose Buddhist monks as their partners in distributing aid to non-Christian villages.
Archbishop Bo reaches out to those affected by the cyclone
All religious groups were made victims by the cyclone. All places of worship — monasteries, clergy houses and convents — bore the brunt of the deadly cyclone. Nargis, in its monstrous ferocity, tore through many of the famous places of worship of all religions. In Aima, in the Pathein Diocese, Fr Andrew Soe Win offered his life as a supreme sacrifice in trying to reach his marooned people. His body was found after 18 days.
Nothing deterred them from the sacred duty of saving lives. In the predominately Buddhist country, where Metta and Karuna (mercy and compassion) are the major tenets of a great religion, compassion broke forth like a healing stream after the demonic deluge. Churches and monasteries became the refugee camps. With death and mayhem threatening them in their villages, thousands took refugee in sacred spaces, seeking coping and mutual consolation. Even before the government could move in, or the do-gooders and NGOs could move in, spontaneous charity sprang forth with Buddhists feeding Christians and Christians feeding the Buddhists, etc. Nargis broke many things in an evil way. Goodness broke all parochial borders that fateful night, when death danced arrogantly across, wounding a nation.
In Bogalay, the Hindu temple opened its portals to feed the multitude. In the ravished streets of Yangon, Muslim merchants were distributing food to the starving masses. More poignant was the response of many poor and lower middle class people. They collected whatever they had and every weekend they treaded across in aid convoy to far off Labutta. Nargis stripped naked a nation with violence, but people of all faiths are clothing it now with compassion.
With other Christian communities, Catholics threw in everything into rescue — money, material and manpower. Many young men and women volunteered to go to the risky villages, strewn with dead bodies of people and animals. The first psycho-social assistance came from nuns who risked their lives by undertaking dangerous boat travels, without life jackets, etc. They were the first ones to hold mothers who lost their children, carried orphans and consoled a grieving community with prayer and simple presence. Hundreds of seminarians were the first rescuers, clearing the villages of debris. All these are done under extreme restrictions. Through the Caritas Internationalis network, assistance continues.
Compassion is the common religion in the post-disaster phase. In Myanmar people lived with various tags — religion, color and tribe. But now Nargis taught us all that human tears have no color, no religion and no tribe.
Posted
June 18th, 2008 in
Asia, cyclone nargis, Emergency Response, myanmar by:
jrivera |
1 Comment »
June 2, 2008 marks the start of the school year in Myanmar and also one month after Cyclone Nargis. However, for so many children there will be no school to go to. For the children in the delta region their lives have been turned upside down. Many of them lost their parents and their homes.
Last week I visited a village called Aima and some surrounding island villages called Pha-ya-lay-gone, Pein-ne-gone, Ta- yoke-gone, and Lein-maw-gone. Aima village is in Labutta township in the southern delta region and is very difficult to reach.
It took almost 10 hours to get there by boat. There, I met families who are still struggling to survive and feed their children. In this area all the schools have been destroyed. For the children of Aima, the horror of the cyclone still haunts them.
Many children cry at night and when it rains. The children fear the worst and re-live the trauma of the night of the May 2. In this village there are so many inner wounds that must be healed over time.
To date very little aid has been able to get to these communities. For the first two weeks, the only aid received by these people was from the Catholic Church.
They told me that without this, they would not have survived. The government now only supplies two cans of rice per person per day, which is not enough for people to live on. In some cases people have been asked by the government to leave temporary camps and return to their villages. In many of the villages there was still no shelter, food or clean water and the government only supplied them with a few kitchen utensils.
My trip to Aima also demonstrated how important it is for the Catholic Church to continue our work and ensure that we support communities as best we can. To date we have been able to supply food, clean water, tarpaulins for shelter, cooking utensils and medical supplies to approximately 20,000 people in Labutta township.
We now must continue to support them, firstly to survive but also in rebuilding their lives. The people I met remain modest in their requests, and ask only for food and shelter. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted
June 10th, 2008 in
Asia, burma, cyclone nargis, Emergency Response, myanmar by:
jrivera |
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