Emelia Amoateng speaking to a delegation from Oxfam America in the church in her village, Teberebie. Photo by Neil Brander/Oxfam America.

The first time I met Emelia Amoateng she introduced me to the members of the Teberebie Concerned Farmers’ Association. The farmers had recently been moved off their land by the Iduapriem gold mine, and were contesting the compensation they were offered by the company. “According to our law, no one should take anything away from you by force, but that is what happened here in Teberebie,” she said to me.

Teberebie’s fields are now buried under massive piles of grey waste rock. The farmers live in modest concrete homes the company built, and have to walk long distances (15 kilometers round trip) to their new fields where they grow oil palms, cocoa, pineapples, and other crops in the rich tropical soil. They live close enough to the mining operation that their homes crack from the blasting in the mine pit, but few of the people have been able to secure employment there.

When I first went to Teberebie in 2007, Amoateng and the others in the Association were in the early stages of what has become a 10-year legal battle. With help from Oxfam’s partners the Center for Public Interest Law and the human rights and environmental group Wacam, the farmers maintained their struggle, despite having little income as the case dragged slowly through the courts.

Oxfam America’s partner Wacam trains activists in the rights protected under Ghana’s Minerals and Mining Act. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America

The case is now on the verge of being settled in court-ordered arbitration, so it is particularly tragic that Amoateng, 38, passed away earlier this month. Despite chronic asthma, she was an inspiring and dedicated leader, tirelessly defending the rights of her neighbors when innocent community members were shot by police, and documenting chemical spills so the community could get appropriate compensation for damages. When the proper authorities failed to do their duty to protect the lives, livelihoods, and property of her community, Amoateng reached out to the media and led demonstrations to call attention to the injustices being perpetrated against Teberebie. She did all this while taking classes to finish her secondary education, and raising two children.

“Our constitution says that if someone comes for your farm, they should negotiate and compensate you before they carry out a project,” she told me, showing me her copy of Ghana’s 2006 Minerals and Mining Act. Her training helped her hold the government and AngoGold Ashanti Mining company accountable for their actions.

Emelia Amoateng in 2007. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America

I found out that Emelia passed away last week when I was in Senegal, driving from the eastern region Tambacounda back to Dakar. We stopped for lunch and I took advantage of a wi-fi connection to get my email, and I read a statement from Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, one of the founders of Wacam: “Emelia Amoateng, the great warrior of Teberebie and an icon of Wacam, has gone the way of all mortals. She died carrying high the resolve of Wacam to fight against irresponsible mining.”

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in northern Lebanon documenting the stories of Syrian refugees. She recently profiled Shatha, a 12-year-old refugee, in a blog post titled The girl whose face you’ll never see (concerned about her safety should she return to Syria, Shatha asked that her face not be photographed). A bright student, Shatha spoke candidly about the loss of her school, which was destroyed in the conflict. Below is Beesley’s latest update.

Shatha holds the notebook with one of her poems. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

A couple of weeks ago I met Shatha. When we left, we gave her with a notebook, pencils, and pens.

At the cash-for-rent distribution I saw her mother, who told me Shatha had drawn a picture of me. We went back and found that she had also written two poems. The translations below are “rough” as the poems are written in an Arabic that is likened to Shakespearean English. I hope to go back with a new notebook so I can borrow the one she’s been writing in to photocopy the original Arabic.

Shatha is writing more poems. She says she is better at that than drawing. She is happy for us to share her poems and was really pleased that so many people, around the world, knew her through the blog.

Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

Here are the rough translations:

Poem 1
Syria
Our hearts love you
How your children love you
How the memory would forget you
We will be back soon, to remove the tears on your cheeks
We will return one day to our mothers to kiss the soil and the flowers
Lovely Syria, we will be back soon.

Poem 2
When I take my pencil and notebook what will I write about?
About my school or my house
I am deprived from living in my house and school
My school, when will I visit you again
To take my bag and run to you
Destruction has replaced you and taken the place of your ringing bells
and without the students

My house, my flowers, I miss you
My Syria, when will I return back to you?

I have dreams that I can’t achieve and make come true
And all I want is living with you in freedom
Syria, my country, I love you.

Shatha’s family are among the 50,000 refugees displaced by the crises in Syria who are receiving cash transfers from Oxfam to help pay rent; the transfers are worth $150 per household per month for two months. Up to 150,000 people will also be receiving vouchers for food and hygiene items. Donate now to support Oxfam’s efforts to aid refugees like Shatha.

In the Segou region of Mali, 82 percent of households polled in a recent survey live on less than $1.25 a day. The typical village is more than 14 miles from a paved road. As a result, few people have access to resources that many of us take for granted—like a place to save and borrow money, for example.

Enter Saving for Change, an innovative program from Oxfam America, Freedom from Hunger, and the Strømme Foundation. Focusing on rural villages like those in Segou, the program trains groups of women to save regularly; they borrow from their group’s fund to build small businesses or homes, or to buy essentials for their families. Members then repay loans from the group with interest. The model has taken off, and Saving for Change now has 680,000 members in 13 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. (Read what members in Guatemala and in Senegal are saying about their experiences.)

Women from the Banakoro village Saving for Change group in Mali hand in their weekly savings contributions during a meeting in 2009. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America

In Mali, where some of the first Saving for Change groups were founded, Oxfam and Freedom From Hunger conducted a three-year study exploring the impacts of the program. The results of the study, released last Friday, show that households in villages with savings groups experienced an 8 percent increase in food security and saved 31 percent more on average.

The groups helped in other ways, too. The study showed that the value of livestock held by households in participating villages increased by 13 percent compared to families in villages without the program. “Livestock are a critical safety net for families. The animals are a form of savings that can be sold in hard times. Imagine if your home value or stock portfolio increased by 13 percent—it could be game-changing for your family,” said Freedom from Hunger President Steve Hollingworth.

Learn more about Saving for Change and the results of the study here.

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in northern Lebanon documenting the stories of Syrian refugees.

Shoes belonging to Shatha, 12, a refugee from Syria living in Lebanon. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

Today I met a girl whose face you’ll never see because she’s too scared about what will happen when she returns to Syria.“I don’t want my photograph to be taken because I’m afraid that when we go back something might happen to us.” If I quoted her on everything she said you would say I made it up. She’s 12 going on 25.

She lives on the first floor of a house, in Lebanon, still under construction. There are piles of rubble and concrete all around, no windows, no comfort. She sleeps in a small “room” with her parents and four siblings.

I’d just finished talking with someone else when she came up and started talking to me in a mixture of English and Arabic. The first thing she says is, “I was at school when it was bombed. Some of the children were killed. We all ran away. We left because we were afraid of the bombings in Syria. When we saw the bombing of the school we thought they bombed all schools all over the world.” It feels like one of the saddest things I’ve heard.

“I miss my friends,” she says, “I miss my teachers. I miss my classes, my English classes, my Arabic classes, my music classes. Now I’m just sitting here every day.” Her mother adds, “She gets bored a lot and keeps crying. I don’t let the children out on the street because I don’t want them to have problems with other children and I’m scared they might fall and get hurt. I don’t have money for any medical treatment.”

The girl continues, “‘I don’t have a pencil, no paper, no nothing. I wake up in the morning and I see children going to school and I cry, why don’t I have the right to go to school? And I sit here and I remember our home back in Syria before the fighting.”

Looking around the small area that is now home, she points and says, “We moved sand and stones from here with our own hands so we could try and have some kind normal living here. There are a lot of rats. I’ve seen them. We get sick because of them.”

A year ago her home in Syria was destroyed by the bombing. In the time that followed they moved from place to place. Each time the fighting got worse the family moved on. Eventually they spent three months living underground with no electricity.

The few belongings that Shatha’s family managed to take with them after their home in Syria was destroyed by an air strike hang on bare walls inside the partially constructed building that is serving as their home. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

She’s the most articulate 12-year-old I’ve met. I’m told, “She was at a school for bright students and was in the top class.” Without a shadow of a doubt she loved school; repeating again the classes, teachers and friends she loved, and saying how so many children died. “I have no idea what has happened to my friends. I don’t know if they are here in Lebanon or in Syria.” When her school was first bombed, “…it was only a small corner so we continued going to school but then it was bombed again and no one was able to go back.”

We look at the tiny space they have for cooking. She looks at me and apologizes: “I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the word in English.” She means kitchen. For the rest of our time together she keeps apologizing. “It’s been a year now since I went to school and I’m forgetting many things. The teachers used to take me to other schools to represent my school. As well as classes I used to teach myself English by reading English books.”

Before leaving she says, “I loved my city. I loved my school. I loved my friends. I loved my teachers.” Her final words are, “Will you come back and visit us?”

Her name is Shatha. It means the smell of flowers in spring.

Oxfam is providing vulnerable families, including Shatha’s, with cash to help them afford safe housing and other essentials. Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

Read more about Shatha here.

We see headlines about the conflict in Syria on a daily basis—but something is missing from those news stories. Most cover the violence… bombings, chemical weapons, civilian deaths. But they rarely mention the families uprooted by the conflict. For more than 1.4 million Syrians, surviving the war has meant fleeing their country. They are now homeless, living in foreign lands like Jordan and Lebanon.

Last week, National Public Radio gave us a window into the lives of Syrian refugees living in Jordan. Middle East correspondent Deborah Amos visited the Za’atari Camp, home to more than 100,000 Syrians at any given time. Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck showed NPR how Za’atari has become a city unto itself–one that no one would create if they had the choice. Oxfam is working in the camp to support refugees who need basic services like water and sanitation.

Amos’ story introduces us to Liqaa, a 26-year-old refugee living with her husband in the camp and expecting her first child. She scrapes together ingredients to make Syrian food in their camp trailer in an effort to create normalcy in their life, which has been turned completely upside down.

Listening to Liqaa’s story, you can imagine walking in her shoes. Homeless, afraid, and living in a foreign country, I think I would crave something as familiar as hometown comfort food as well. The basic things that we take for granted are the things that Liqaa and her fellow refugees are living without while also enduring the trauma of escaping (and surviving) violent conflict. Listen to the story below, and then let us know what you think.

You can meet more refugees like Liqaa by following Oxfam on Twitter and Instagram to see the latest photos from the crisis.

Please give generously to help Oxfam provide Syrian refugees with essential aid

As the summer concert season rapidly approaches, our music outreach shifts into high gear. In addition to many festivals (like Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, Summer Camp, and Gathering of the Vibes), Oxfam volunteers connect with thousands of fellow music fans at concerts by artists who support our work. This summer, a diverse group of artists have invited our volunteers to join them at select shows.

So make sure you look for Oxfam, and learn more about our efforts to right the wrongs of poverty and injustice, at these summer dates by the following great bands:

1. Fitz & The Tantrums

Known for their incredibly fun live shows, Fitz & The Tantrums plan to spend most of the rest of 2013 on the road, and Oxfam will be at many of their tour dates too.

Fitz & the Tantrums. Photo: Bob Ferguson/Oxfam America

2. The National

Touring behind their new album, Trouble Will Find Me (out May 20), The National recently released a video for “Demons” from that album:

3. DJ Shadow

DJ Shadow has been an Oxfam supporter since his trip with Oxfam to Kenya in 2007 (see more about the trip in the video below). His current tour features his “All Basses Covered” DJ set.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Syrian refugee crisis is escalating at a breathtaking pace. In early March the UN estimated that four million people in Syria were in urgent need of assistance; by late April, the number had shot up to 6.8 million.

And more than 7,000 people are fleeing to neighboring countries every day.

But aid providers are struggling to raise funds for this emergency, and there are serious obstacles to reaching people in need within Syria.

In a new report, “Overtaken by Need,” Oxfam lays out the latest facts and figures and warns of the consequences of neglecting this human-made disaster.

Numbers only hint at what’s happening on the ground, though, so our colleagues in the region have also sent us pictures of people they’ve met—a reminder that every one of the millions affected is a human being with a story.

Like Samira (see below), a widow and mother who fled with her family to Lebanon. “We decided to come to Lebanon because of the fighting that was taking place,” she said. “We couldn’t get any food anymore, we couldn’t live our lives, we lost our jobs, and we worried that we couldn’t stay alive.”

Now she is safe from the weapons of war, but not from the elements: her family spent the frigid winter in a homemade shelter built of cinder blocks, cardboard, and plastic sheeting. And day and night she keeps a vigil. “I just can’t stop thinking about how to feed my children and how to protect them.”

Read about Oxfam’s response to the emergency in Lebanon and Jordan.

Oxfam has only raised 10% of the funds it needs for this response. Please give generously to help us provide refugees with essential aid.

Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Above, girls collect water from a tap stand in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Below, a boy plays on a street where families hang their laundry.

Zaatari is now home to more than 100,000 refugees from the conflict in Syria. According to UNICEF, half of those refugees are children.

With 2,500 to 3,000 Syrians crossing into Jordan each day, Zaatari is now equivalent in size to the fifth-largest city in Jordan. Fifty thousand people arrived in February alone. Oxfam is helping more than 20,000 refugees in the camp by installing water taps and storage towers, latrines, showers, and laundry areas.

Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

“We’re surrounded by children for most of the day. We walk together, we eat together, we share stories and dreams,” said Farah al-Basha, an Oxfam engineer working in Zaatari. “When the time comes to leave the camp … We’re thinking about how lovely a shower will be, but [then] the kids come and say ‘see you tomorrow’ and we close the doors with a big smile. … We start thinking about what can we do next for those kids.”

Donate now to support Oxfam’s efforts to aid refugees from Syria.

Cocoa farmer Adelaju Olaleye leans against the wall of her house in Oke-Agbede Isale, a village in Nigeria’s southwestern cocoa-growing region. Photo: George Osodi/Panos for Oxfam America

Sweet news today for chocolate lovers: the biggest chocolate maker in the world, Mondelez International, has agreed to take steps to address inequality facing women in their cocoa supply chains—thanks to pressure from customers like you.

More than 100,000 people around the world joined Oxfam’s campaign, signing petitions and taking action to urge Mondelez and its competitors to tackle the hunger, poverty, and unequal pay facing many women cocoa farmers and workers. You also made your voices heard by sending messages to the companies on Facebook and Twitter.

One of the images posted to Mondelez’s Facebook page by Oxfam supporters. Pictured: Amir Gorjifard of the Oxfam Club at Grinnell College. Photo: Mary Zheng

Today’s announcement by Mondelez follows commitments last month by Mars and Nestlé to address these issues. Together, Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé buy more than 30 percent of the world’s cocoa—so changes in their policies could have huge effects for cocoa farmers and their families.

“Empowering women cocoa farmers has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people, some of whom are earning less than $2 a day,” said Judy Beals, manager of Oxfam’s Behind the Brands campaign. “We hope that the steps taken by Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé offer an example to the rest of the food and beverage industry that consumers are paying attention to how companies impact the communities they work in.”

Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé are now taking the first steps to commit to the empowerment of women and to find out how women are being treated in their supply chains. All have agreed to publish the data from first stage impact assessments in one year’s time and to publish concrete action plans to address the issues. Mondelez will also sign on to the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles later this month, becoming the first of the three major chocolate companies to do so. Learn more about companies’ commitments.

Oxfam will make sure that these companies stick to their promises, but we can’t do it without you. We’ll put out progress reports so consumers and supporters can keep track and hold Mars, Mondelez, and Nestle to their word. You can also stay informed and take further actions through Oxfam’s Behind the Brands scorecard; we’ll be updating this online tool in real time so you can see how the giant companies that make your favorite brands (chocolate and otherwise) measure up.

Sarah Livingston is Oxfam America’s internal communications officer. Like many other Oxfam America staffers, she works out of our headquarters in downtown Boston.

Monday was a horrific day for the city of Boston, and the world. As two bombs ripped through crowds gathered near the marathon finish line, our hearts broke. My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of this tragedy, their families, and everyone whose healing journey is just beginning.

I was at the marathon Monday afternoon, arriving just minutes before the explosions, to meet my fiancé for lunch. The sidewalks were full of people from around the world: families on spring break, parents with little ones in tow, boosted up on their shoulders for a better view of the finish line. I saw groups from Kenya, Mexico, and Canada, decked out in their national gear, with flags waving. These expressions of national pride and celebration are a sobering reminder of what yesterday was all about: The world coming together to celebrate athleticism, strength and endurance, and the charitable causes of the runners.

We didn’t stay long on the sidewalk near the finish line. In fact, we missed the moment when expressions of joy and accomplishment turned to panic. Minutes before the bombs went off, we opted to go into a restaurant for lunch. That was when we heard the explosions. The scene that followed was chaos: people frantically running, screaming, and trying to get out of harm’s way—unsure if such a location even existed.

I’m reminded that for a moment, I felt a taste of what many of our sisters and brothers around the world experience in conflict situations. I thought of places like Syria, where the threat of violence is a daily reality, forcing more than a million people to flee their homes.

This week we were also reminded of the terrifying power of hate. Fortunately, the story doesn’t end here. We can resolve to live in the even greater power of love: Continuing the fight for justice, working to right the wrongs that exist in our world, and building pathways toward peace.