19 January 2010 - One week after Haiti’s cataclysmic earthquake, Baltimore-based World Relief is providing urgent medical care and feeding hundreds of survivors in Port-au-Prince. The relief agency is running several feeding centers in partnership with local churches –providing hot meals every day for hundreds of quake victims, desperate for food and water. In the next few days, World Relief will expand its hot meal network in the capital, and distribute tarps for emergency shelter.

The agency’s country director, Dr. Hubert Morquette, and Dr. Esther Gwan, from World Relief’s headquarters in Baltimore, continue to treat scores of injured around-the-clock at King’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince – one of the few medical facilities still functioning after last week’s quake. World Relief and its partners have set up three operating theaters, staffed by American surgeons, doctors and nurses, at the 300-bed hospital.

"We have treated hundreds of injuries as well as countless open and closed fractures, ”Dr. Morquette said. We work all day and late into the night as patients continue to flock to our facility. World Relief’s Disaster Response team plans to drill a bore hole at King’s Hospital to supply clean water for patients and staff. For 15 years, World Relief has worked alongside churches to combat AIDS, care for vulnerable children and their mothers, and create economic opportunities in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.

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19 August 2009 - the first annual "World Humanitarian Day" in honor of all humanitarian workers who have lost their lives or been injured in the course of their work.  Among these dedicated professionals is one of the great humanitarians, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died on this day in 2003 alongside 21 other colleagues in the Canal Hotel bombing in Baghdad.  His memory serves as an inspiration to all who carry out humanitarian work today, even as assistance efforts in many places continue to be limited by increasingly frequent violent and targeted attacks on humanitarian staff.

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While in Congo on my recent trip, I was accompanied by some amazing friends -- Ben Edwards (photographer) and Beth Fischer (videographer) from the World Relief NEXT team. The following video by Beth is a remarkable and heart-wrenching overview of the situation in eastern Congo and the work that World Relief is doing there.

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Furaha Bandu was working in her field with her husband when they heard gunshots. Suddenly, people began running frantically in all directions, screaming in terror. Congo’s brutal conflict had reached their community -- and the rebel soldiers would show them no mercy.

As villagers ran into the forest, the soldiers killed any they could find. Her heart pounding, Furaha picked up her two month old baby and ran for cover.  She found her husband -- but where were their five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter? In desperation, the young mother begged her fleeing neighbors: “Have you seen my children?”One neighbor stopped in her tracks to break the horrific news -- Furaha’s children were killed by the soldiers as they cried for their mommy.

The Will to Live

Furaha and her husband were so filled with grief that at first they, too, wanted to die. But the will to live took over and they pressed on through the forest, eating plant roots and sleeping under the trees at night. “We were so afraid,” Furaha recalls.

When they came to a road, they came across a horrendous sight -- the bodies of people who had been massacred. They walked another 10 miles until they arrived at a church in Kirotshe. There, the pastor told them not to walk any further.

With World Relief’s assistance, the church provided food to Furaha and other families fleeing the violence. World Relief built a school next to the church, and today Furaha serves in the church with her husband and trains other women in sewing and dress-making. Furaha is the face of Congo’s war. She has suffered incredible heartache. And yet she has found the courage to press on -- and the faith to believe that God has a purpose for her life.

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The situation in Congo continues to be of great concern, with the United Nations recently reporting that a notorious Ugandan rebel group has killed more than 500 people and kidnapped over 400, including several over the past four days. "We are increasingly concerned about the humanitarian situation and continuing attacks by the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, on the civilian population in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Oriental Province,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva.

The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative to Congo, Alan Doss, is calling for the return of all boys and girls fighting in the war zone. "The recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups is a war crime and a crime against humanity. This literally destroys the future of this country,” said Mr. Doss, who is also the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo.

Following is a moving video on the situation in Congo:

Last week I wrote about the new Disaster Cauze that is focused on helping to alleviate the suffering in Congo. Cauzal Coffee is partnering with World Relief in this important endeavor, and here is a moving video introducing this new Cauze:

World Relief has recently given an encouraging update on their distribution of beans, flour, salt, vegetable oil, and soap to hundreds of families in the Rutshuru region of eastern Congo. "They were astonished to see us," said World Relief's Marcel Serubungo. "At the same time, we were surprised to see all of them alive." Hunger is the biggest challenge the local people face, as it remains unsafe for people to go into their fields to harvest crops.

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As many of us are making last minute preparations for Christmas, hundreds of thousands of Congolese continue to suffer from war and injustice. Last week the UN Secretary General said that the UN has opened investigations into possible war crimes committed in eastern Congo, where more than 1.35 million people are now displaced. He said that there is alarming evidence of targeted killings and possibly civilian massacres. (Read more news here.) 

Cauzal Coffee recently created a new Disaster Cauze that is focused on helping to alleviate the suffering in Congo. When you visit the Cauzal Coffee Shop and buy Cauzal's award-winning coffee, Cauzal Coffee will send 25% of the purchase price to World Relief for the provision of vital supplies to uprooted families in eastern Congo. What better gift can you give this Christmas?

My last blog entry on Congo has many people asking me what we can do to stop the atrocities in Congo. This is always the difficult question, and it is made especially hard because we often feel that we have to do something major, right away. But I'm convinved that it is ultimately more effective if we start small and just do something! If we keep at it and if we get others involved ... we can create and be part of a movement. Here are my suggestions about what you can do, and let me know what ideas you've got.

• learn and become informed (later I'll blog about good books and resources on the situation in Congo)
  
• tell others what you’ve learned
  
• advocate and lobby to your elected officials, and support those in government who are paying attention to Congo (more on this below) 
  
• support organizations that are bringing direct relief and assistance in the North Kivu province of eastern Congo, especially those that have a historical and reputable presence in that part of Congo
  
• don’t disengage when this issue falls off of the news
  
• keep the pressure on yourself, your network, and your elected officials when people forget about this
  
• continue to give to reputable organizations working in Congo -- the really difficult problems behind a crisis of this magnitude take decades to resolve successfully
  
• get to know Congolese or Africans from that region of Africa who live in the US, and have them speak to your network of friends
  
• commit yourself to this cause 
  

On the subject of supporting elected officials who are trying to do something about the situation in Congo, you should know about a very recent bipartisan resolution in congress that is calling for an end to violence in Congo. The resolution was introduced by Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), and it is cosponsored by a bipartisan group of senators including Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), John Kerry (D-MA), Chris Dodd (D-CT), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Kit Bond (R-MO), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). If you live in any of these states, please take the time to log onto your senator's website, fill out a feedback form, and thank him or her for supporting this resolution.

 

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I just read an open letter to the United Nations from community leaders in eastern Congo, dated 18 November. I encourage you to read the letter in its entirety, as it is stunning and shocking. Below is a fragment from the letter. Elsewhere in the letter it asks the questions: Who will protect us? Who will help us? Do we not deserve protection? Are we not equal to others?

How would you answer these questions ...?   

 

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