Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in northern Lebanon documenting the stories of Syrian refugees. She recently profiled Reema (not her real name), 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, Reema asked that her face not be photographed). A bright student, Reema spoke candidly about the loss of her school, which was destroyed in the conflict. Below is Beesley’s latest update.

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

A couple of weeks ago I met Reema. 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 Reema 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.

Reema 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.

Reema’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.

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

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

Shoes belonging to Reema (not her real name), 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 Reema’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?”

Oxfam is providing vulnerable families, including Reema’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 Reema here.

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.

In early March, Oxfam ambassador Djimon Hounsou visited a cattle camp in South Sudan, where many communities are suffering from the consequences of the unregulated flow of arms and ammunition. Photo by Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin

Earlier this month, actor Djimon Hounsou traveled with Oxfam America to South Sudan to bring attention to the need our world has for an international Arms Trade Treaty. This is his blog.

I just came back from an emotional trip through South Sudan, a country that’s still struggling to find peace after more than 50 years of war. I visited herding communities, like the one above, where the number of cattle owned by a family defines its social status and wealth. While cattle-raiding has been going on for generations, spears have been replaced with guns, and the violence increases season after season. I was shocked to see young boys carrying AK-47s.

Today, in New York, the UN starts to discuss the international Arms Trade Treaty. I’ve seen firsthand the horrifying results of unregulated weapons. It’s time for us to take a firm stance against this, to begin to put an end to the violence. A strong treaty is the foundation we need to make sure weapons and ammunition are not transferred to places where the weapons will be used to stall development or violate human rights.

Photo: Creativos/Oxfam - click to enlarge

This week’s photo and story comes from Tjarda Muller, Oxfam communications officer in Central America.

Small-business owner Olga Alicia Pérez, pictured, lives in San Miguel Chicaj’, municipality of the department of Baja Verapaz in central Guatemala. “I make ice, jelly and fruit cocktails,” Pérez says. “Thank God, the business is doing well. My son studies and I am able to give him some money for a midday snack, or for the assignments he gets.”

Pérez is a member of an Oxfam Saving for Change group in her community, which helps her to keep her small business afloat. In Saving for Change, groups of 15 to 20 women combine their savings in a group fund. Members can borrow money from the fund to start or revive a small business, buy seeds and fertilizer for their land, or respond to an emergency. In Baja Verapaz, where 70 percent of the population lives in poverty, recurrent droughts as well as heavy rainfalls can devastate crops. Saving for Change provides an opportunity for women to lift themselves and their families out of these crisis situations.

“We fight; we struggle to save some money. This is a beautiful project. Many people in San Miguel Chicaj’ are involved now,” says Pérez.

The benefits of savings groups like these are now reaching far beyond Central America. Last week a group of international organizations, including Oxfam America, announced “50 by 2020,” an initiative to expand savings group membership globally from 6 million to 50 million by 2020.

This blog post was written by Erin Gorman, CEO of Divine Chocolate, a 100 percent fair trade company owned in part by the farmers of the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana. Oxfam America is partnering with Divine Chocolate for this year’s International Women’s Day celebration.

Christiana Adusei. Photo:Sophi Tranchell

Christiana Adusei, a 58-year-old cocoa farmer, sits with me in the cooperative’s meeting room in Kumasi watching the Ghana Black Stars play in the Africa Cup of Nations.  In two months she will be coming to the US, her first trip out of Ghana, to speak to consumers, businesses, and politicians about her life as a woman cocoa farmer.

Christiana, like so many women in cocoa, ‘’has it all” – all the household duties, the cooking, the cleaning, the farming of foodstuffs. They ensure children go to school and their health is looked after. They farm cocoa and do the drying and fermenting of beans.

Unlike most women in cocoa, Christiana is a member in her own right of a fair trade farmers’ cooperative. She joined Kuapa Kokoo with her husband 11 years ago, because she heard from other farmers that the organization was democratic and fair and that farmers received bonuses and a cutlass, which is among a cocoa farmer’s most prized tools.

About eight years ago she started as the secretary to the village recorder, the person who is elected by the village society to purchase its cocoa for Kuapa. She started training farmers to dry and ferment their cocoa properly so that it met Kuapa’s standards of good cocoa.

“I saw that I was a good teacher and that I could keep good records, and I decided that I should become a recorder myself,” Christiana said. At the elections she stood against the recorder, a man, and won. “Kuapa trained me that as a woman I could be a recorder and could be a leader in my society,” she said.

Cocoa farming is hard and to earn extra income Christiana raises grasscutters, a large rodent prized for its high-protein meat. The youngest of her seven children is still in school and Christiana wants to help her finish her education so the extra income helps. “I hope she will become a nurse and get a good job so she can help me in the future,” Christiana said.

Even though there isn’t a women’s group in her village, Christiana and other women still benefit from regional women’s empowerment trainings offered by Kuapa’s Gender Program. Kuapa instituted the program in 1998 as a response to the challenges so many women cocoa farmers face. The program trains women to take part in the cooperative leadership. Women learn skills to generate additional income, and can then access loans through Kuapa Kokoo’s credit union.

The three-pronged approach of building women’s confidence, skills training, and access to credit has hugely shaped Kuapa. Today 30 percent of the members are women farmers and the president of the cooperative is a woman.

We have a long way to go to make policy and practices work for women in small-scale agricultural production. Members like Christiana show us why it’s important to start trying to do more.

Take action to support women cocoa farmers around the world. Tell Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé: The women who grow and pick cocoa deserve better.

This blog post was written by Oxfam humanitarian press officer Caroline Gluck. It also appeared today on the Huffington Post.

On St. Valentine’s evening, the families of Aya and Mohammed gathered in a tiny prefabricated building in Jordan’s Zaatari camp, a vast sprawling place in the desert housing an estimated 90,000 refugees who fled Syria, and agreed on their engagement.

Aya, 17, and Mohammed, 21, are cousins and both originally from Daraa, in Syria.

Mohammed arrived in Jordan a year ago, and is one of the lucky few to find work. But his pay, doing the night shift in a restaurant, nets him only around $230 a month.

Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

There is probably no money for Aya to buy a white wedding dress or veil.  “Am I sad about this? Yes,” she says her eyes downcast, but still finding it hard not to smile shyly at her father and family who are watching.

The engagement party will be held in the family prefab in the camp next week, but it will be a small, intimate family affair. “There will be no music and dancing, because it doesn’t seem right when back home, people are getting killed,” said Mohammed.

“I never expected to get married like this, to be in a refugee camp,” Aya said. “I’m sad that this isn’t happening back home, because all the family, our loved ones and friends would be there.  Now, we are all separated.”

The couple plan to marry in a few months time. Mohammed is sharing a small room with Aya’s brother, who also works with him in a restaurant  But the couple will need some space and privacy to make their new life together.

“Life is very tough here,” says Mohammed. “But that doesn’t mean it should stop us from trying to live life normally. Life must go on, with or without the regime in Syria. I just wish all the family could be here.”

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

Emily Bhatti is Oxfam America’s Media Relations Coordinator

On my first visit to New Orleans, I arrived with over 150,000 visitors, football fans, and Mardi Gras party goers. The Super Bowl drew the eyes of the nation to this city in southern Louisiana, but most paid little attention to the ongoing struggles of the area’s long-suffering residents.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region are no strangers to disasters; from Hurricane Katrina, to Hurricane Rita, the BP oil spill, and the most recent Hurricane Isaac, this region has seen its fair share of struggles. Oxfam America has been working in the Gulf Coast since before Katrina and with our local partners we have fought to not only restore the area but better prepare it for future disasters.

It would have been easy for me to go along with the party in the Big Easy, throw on some beads, order a big plate of crawfish, listen to the music, and have a good time. But I knew what many of the other party goers didn’t know: There is still work to be done.

Completely different world

So instead I went to Plaquemines Parish, where I was soon in a completely different world. The level of destruction was staggering; from boats floating on fields of grass, to vacant homes and silent streets. During Hurricane Isaac in August 2012 flood waters rose almost 14 feet in some areas, damaging hundreds of homes and displacing many.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Rawson is senior advisor for community organizing at Oxfam America, and a musician who performs around Boston and Providence.

What’s the greater thrill? Watching the David Wax Museum live last week at the Royale in Boston? Or seeing the band emerge into success over the past several years from a mere twinkle in an Oxfam intern’s eye? If you haven’t yet heard their high-octane mix of rock, Mexican folk, and Americana, you should check it out now, before they become even more massive: The band just won the Boston Music Awards’ Song of the Year for “Harder Before It Gets Easier” and the video (below) also ranked in Paste Magazine’s top 10 videos of 2012.

Singer/guitarist David Wax is first and foremost a poet. I remember when we used to jam at Oxfam to whatever audience we could find – usually a couple of interns – and the comments (and adoration) would always turn to David’s lyrics. And I remember when he commented on the folk poetry of Mexico he would highlight the ironic humor, the crass poking fun at life’s heartbreaks, finding comedy in the tragedy of everyday life.

This was during his stint as fair trade coffee intern at Oxfam America. Fast forward several years, including one year of music study at the feet of Mexico’s traditional Son players, and David has brought humor, insight, and above all intensity to the stage. A line jumped out at me at last week’s Royale show: “Give me something /so goddamn true/ Salvador Allende/ in the final moments of the coup.”

As a friend and fan of David Wax Museum, another line also sticks with me: “the rise and fall/ of your chest… it’s not a word I’ve used but for the first time I feel blessed.” A year or so into his life as a touring musician, David returned to Oxfam to join a lunchtime jam session with some of our in-house musicians. Most of us played in muted volume and sang in hushed voices so as not to disturb colleagues working nearby. When it was David’s turn to lead a song, he belted it out full volume. “I don’t have any other way,” he said.

I think of this statement often as I watch the David Wax Museum rising, and their sound getting bigger.

OxfamBuzzList is a blog series about the movies, books, blogs, music, and more that have Oxfam staff and supporters talking. If you’d like to contribute a guest post or suggest a topic, please leave a comment below.

Lissette Miller is a former Oxfam Action Corps organizer and student volunteer. She lives in Washington, DC.

I’m quite picky when it comes to films (I’m that guy), but even the rain couldn’t stop me from enjoying the film También la Lluvia (Even the Rain), which I first saw last year at the Coral Gables Arts Cinema in Miami.

For one, the story touches upon issues that will make you want to join a picket line. It takes place in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where a movie is being filmed about the Columbian voyage to the “New World” and their unexpected encounters with its inhabitants. Gael García Bernal plays the director, who hires the local townspeople to portray “Native” people like Hatuey, a 16th century Taíno chief known for leading uprisings against the colonizers. Things get cray when the filmmakers discover the actor playing Hatuey is, in his own life, an active protestor against the privatization of his city’s water plant (a direct allusion to the Cochabamba Water Wars).

Also, Gael García Bernal. I mean, c’mon, the man’s face looks like it was carved by angels. More importantly, he’s a social justice activist at heart who’s been working with Oxfam since 2005. He’s visited Chiapas, Mexico, to meet farmers directly affected by unfair global trade practices. He’s had a hand in urging world leaders to address climate change, and is a supporter of Oxfam’s GROW campaign, or CRECE en Español. Gael, along with friend and fellow actor Diego Luna, founded the non-profit Ambulante, which screens documentary films and hosts training programs in places where they are rarely available.

In También la Lluvia, however, Gael plays a far from compassionate character, who knowingly makes a profit off his low-paid Bolivian crew and continues shooting his movie even as the water protests turn violent.

Stimulating story, aside, I also appreciated that this was a subtitled movie, with the actors speaking Spanish. Seriously, what’s with the movies set outside the US with non-English speaking characters, yet with all-English dialogue? As if everyone in the world is speaking English to one another in weird, obscure accents, maintaining every other aspect of their culture save for their language. Oh, Hollywood, you sly devil, you.

Bottom line: If you’re an Ox-friend, you’ll dig this this movie. También la Lluvia highlights certain injustices done to poor, often-silent populations, and the power they wield when they stand together in opposition, while somehow never straying into preachy-land.

OxfamBuzzList is a blog series about the movies, books, blogs, music, and more that have Oxfam staff and supporters talking. If you’d like to contribute a guest post or suggest a topic, please leave a comment below.