Angela Bruce Raeburn is Oxfam America’s senior policy adviser for humanitarian response in Haiti. Last month, she visited the largest “spontaneous settlement” in Port-au-Prince.

This photo at the Petionville golf camp was taken 10 months after the earthquake in Haiti. Photo by Chris Hufstader / Oxfam America.

Located at the end of a winding road in the posh part of town, past the home of the US Ambassador to Haiti and the tennis courts, sits a golf course. It is the site of a make-shift camp plastered with the big letters naming the large aid agencies that have provided assistance here since the earthquake.

It has also been the home of approximately 16,000 men, women, and children since January 2010 when the quake decimated the already fragile and tenuous lives they once led.

Romelus Raynald, the coordinator of water, sanitation, and hygiene promotion activities at the camp, noted: “The people come to my office and they tell me their stories. They want work, they want food, and they want their kids to go to school.”

Raynald is an impressive, soft-spoken man whose face is an open book of sadness and details about the camp and its residents. He says that the camp population has fallen from about 9,000 families to roughly 4,500 families. “Many have returned to their homes, others have found alternative homes and temporary shelters.”

“But those who are left behind truly have no place to go. “There has not been a lot offered by anyone to help. It is really Sean who has helped us.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ubah Hassan is a model and activist, and the President and Co-founder of Maji Umbrellas. Ubah has also served as a spokesperson for FEED projects and recently became a Sisters on the Planet Ambassador for Oxfam America.

As a model, I promote luxury goods—handbags, shoes, and couture clothing. But as an activist, social entrepreneur, and native of Somalia, I know what real luxury is: access to clean water.

Since the July 2011 declaration of famine in Somalia by the United Nations, I have been thinking a lot about water and food shortages in the Horn of Africa. I recently partnered with Oxfam America and created Maji Umbrellas to raise awareness about the crisis in East Africa and money for the 13 million people affected by the drought and famine. Maji will donate a portion of each umbrella purchase to Oxfam America’s relief work in East Africa, enough to provide a day’s supply of clean water to 20 people.

One in eight people has inadequate access to water supplies. And that lack of clean water claims more lives each year than all forms of violence on the planet combined.

The numbers are shocking. And the reality’s even worse.

I know firsthand what it’s like to go thirsty. I was born in Somalia and, at the age of seven, fled this war-torn country to Kenya with my brother and father. There were many days in Kenya when my family, neighbors, and I went with very little water. Sometimes the water pipe in my town would break or the water would get contaminated. When that happened, we’d travel for hours to the next village to get water. And once we got there, we had to wait for hours while others who arrived before us filled their canteens. Read the rest of this entry »

Drought has reduced available pasture for livestock herds in eastern Senegal. Photo by Aliou Bassoum/Oxfam America.

Second of two posts by guest blogger Aliou Bassoum, Oxfam America’s regional communications officer in Dakar, Senegal.

It takes a little more than an hour on a red dirt road through forests and millet fields to find the village of Balkissima, population 162. We can still see a few stalks in the fields, left over from the harvest last fall here in the region of Kolda. According to an assessment by the World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization in November, about 138,800 people in Kolda are at high risk of food insecurity.

Some of them are here. They are mostly farmers and herders in Balkissima, a small village with a few mud-walled houses. Around one of them, the home of the chief, stand a few cows. This area is well known for raising livestock.

The food crisis here in southern Senegal is not just hitting people. The livestock are also suffering, and becoming quite skinny, almost puny in size. The village chief, Amadou Korka Balde, says it is due to lack of pasture in the area, and the poor quality of what grass is there during the dry winter months.

Read the rest of this entry »

Berthe Souré says she grew only 400 kg of rice in her last crop, about one tenth her normal yield. Photo by Aliou Bassoum/Oxfam America.

First of two posts by Oxfam’s regional communication officer in Senegal, Aliou Bassoum.

This year there is another food crisis knocking at the door of the Sahel, and it is threatening about 850,000 people in Senegal. Many of them live in Kolda, southern Senegal, and in Kedougou in the east, about 12 hours from Dakar by car.

I’ve just visited these areas over the last few weeks with the humanitarian team planning our response, and in each of the villages we heard a similar story: The last harvest was not good, and people are hungry. Many agricultural communities experience a hungry period while their crops are in the ground and they finish eating the food harvested from the previous year. But this year the lean season is happening four or five months earlier than normal.

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L to R: Actress/model Kimora Lee, actor Djimon Hounsou wearing Ermenegildo Zegna, actor Emile Hirsch, actor Colin Firth wearing Ermenegildo Zegna, Livia Firth, President of Oxfam America Raymond Offenheiser wearing Ermenegildo Zegna, actress Kristin Davis, Anna Zegna and and Publisher of Vanity Fair Edward Menicheschi attend the Vanity Fair and Ermenegildo Zegna Dinner hosted by Colin & Livia Firth and Anna Zegna, in support of Oxfam America and The Green Carpet Challenge. Photo by Donato Sardella/Getty Images for VF

Lyndsay Cruz is Oxfam America’s senior advisor for public figures, working with celebrities to amplify Oxfam’s work around the world.

This past Wednesday night, Vanity Fair, Oxfam Ambassadors Colin and Livia Firth, and Italian clothing designer Ermenegildo Zegna hosted an event at the Chateau Marmont in LA to benefit Oxfam America and the Green Carpet Challenge. Anna Zegna, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, and Oxfam America’s president Ray Offenheiser joined Celebrity Ambassadors  Kristin Davis, Djimon Hounsou and his wife Kimora Lee Simmons, and Emile Hirsh. Other celebrity  supporters in attendance included Mia Wasikowska, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Cameron Diaz, Gary Oldman, and Kenneth Branagh. (You can read more about the event in the LA Times and watch video coverage on Entertainment Tonight.)

The Green Carpet Challenge, founded by Oxfam Ambassador Livia Firth and British journalist Lucy Siegle, pairs glamour and ethics to raise the profile of sustainable style at the world’s most high profile red carpet events. Oxfam is a charitable partner of the Green Carpet Challenge.

Check out more photos from the benefit event below:

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2. Make it hands-on. We host a lot of [informational] tables about Oxfam at farmers’ markets and music festivals. At one festival, we wanted to offer people something more than a petition to sign. So we invited them to use food items, like seeds or beans, to decorate postcards with what they thought a world without hunger would look like, or to write or draw a message to share with their legislators. We ended up with about 60 hand-decorated cards. When we brought the cards to our next meeting with representatives, they paid attention. Signatures are great, but a handwritten note or picture feels more personal.

3. Connect your community to the world. In Des Moines, the Oxfam Action Corps combines legislative efforts with hands-on projects that make a difference in our city. Once a month, we volunteer at community gardens or help out at a local food pantry. Talking to [our fellow volunteers] helps make people  aware of Oxfam and the international angle to the issues. It’s also a great way to bring in new volunteers who are looking for ways to give back.

4. Reach out over a meal. Food brings people together in ways that you wouldn’t expect. It was an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet that first inspired me to work with Oxfam; I’ve been part of five Hunger Banquets, and each one is different. We co-organize these events with other groups, like the ONE Campaign or students at a local university, who can bring in additional people and ideas. We also co-hosted a potluck dinner with Oxfam’s Sisters on the Planet ambassadors in Iowa, and we’re planning another potluck in the spring. There are always good discussions during the meal, and afterward a lot of people come up to us wanting to get involved in our efforts.

If you want to get involved, apply here to join the Oxfam Action Corps in Des Moines and 14 other US cities.

Sophia Lafontant is Oxfam America’s lead Haiti organizer, working on policy and advocacy issues with the Haitian diaspora. In her first post about Haiti—hours after the earthquake—she recounted her profound worry as she tried desperately to learn the fate of family members still living in the country.

Before my 25^th birthday, I hadn’t been to Haiti since I was a girl in the 1980s. My parents were among the second wave of Haitians that left the country in the decade prior and once the Duvalier regime fell there was enough uncertainty that Haiti became an all but distant memory for them. But I held on to my fond and vivid memories of growing up in my grandmother’s house on Avenue Christophe, in the heart of Port-au-Prince, a few blocks away from the famous Olfoson Hotel which counted Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Mick Jagger as some of its famed international guests during its heyday.

Sophia Lafontant, right, worked with Jacqueline Morette, a farmer and head of an Oxfam partner organization in Haiti.

While I lived in Boston, MA, I always had a foot in Haiti. Like most children of the diaspora, I felt the need to embrace both places. In the summer of 2007, I embarked on my first trip back to Haiti: it had been on my mind and it was time to return to the place I now scarcely remembered. I will never forget the blast of heat that rushed over me when we touched down; it was like someone was holding a blow dryer to my face.

It’s difficult to explain why, but Haiti instantly felt like home. The familiar foods, music, language filled with allusions and metaphors, the stream of relatives and family friends that trickle in throughout the day to greet and welcome me; the constant color everywhere—on tap taps, sides of buildings, street art and of course the brightly painted houses. It all beckoned me–with so much beauty it’s hard not to smile still.

A friend once asked me what makes Haiti so different from other Caribbean countries. I paused to think about what answer I would give. My response was “the struggle.” The long struggle. Haiti has had more than its share of pain and tragedy. Whether it’s the subjugation and indignation of slavery, 32 coups in its history, harsh and crippling international sanctions and policies, and tense relations with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, and seemingly endless battles with mother nature, Haitians miraculously dig deep to find an inner strength that escapes most of us. And it is that spirit and determination to make a way out of no way that I find beautiful and admire so much.

It’s been two years since the devastating earthquake. Despite the inactions or action of those in power, Haitians will continue to pull money together to pay their children’s school fees, continue to ensure that their uniforms are pressed and clean, and continue to hope that tomorrow is better than today. It is that seemingly bottomless well of hope that keeps me at my computer late into the evening some nights. It’s what keeps me on conference calls with allies and cranking out organizing plans. All minuscule in the grand scheme of things, and none of which can be credited with saving lives or adding to the meager incomes of the millions of Haitians that live on two bucks a day.

Still, it’s the very least I can do for a nation that has given me so much—so much laughter, color, and so much love.

Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck retraces her steps and finds that the challenges many people faced in the wake of the disaster continue to persist—as does their hope for change.

I wasn’t looking forward to returning to Haiti. Two years ago, I was one of the first of Oxfam’s emergency team to fly to the island, arriving three days after it was hit by a devastating earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people and left more than a million others homeless.

Marguerite Ulysse holds her two-year-old daughter, Neika, who was born in a camp two days after the earthquake. Photo by Caroline Gluck

 First impressions weren’t good. Rubble still lay in the streets. Though much of it was carefully piled up, many collapsed buildings still remained balanced precariously in between other spaces where rebuilding had taken place. 

And then there were the camps of tents. Not the flimsy shelters made of clothing scraps and plastic sheets I’d become so familiar with on my first visit.  These camps appeared depressingly permanent. It seemed people were settling down for good; that what had been a temporary option was now the only long-term solution available.

But many tens of thousands of families camped on private land, not in public spaces, now face the threat of forced evictions, often through the use of violence, by the owners who haven’t received any rent for the past two years. 

I spent the first few days retracing my steps. The old Oxfam office – part of which had been seriously damaged in the quake – had been remodelled and repainted and was now the office of a private company. The damaged annex had been fenced off and the collapsed top two stories had been removed.

The enormous camp for displaced families occupying what had been a golf course in the leafy and well-to-do suburb of Petionville was still bursting at the seams.  Although the number of residents had decreased, people were still living cheek-by-jowl. The daily struggles for the basics–clean water, some privacy, and work–were still as pressing as ever.

Read the rest of this entry »

Telley Madina, Oxfam America’s coastal communities program officer, just returned from Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, where he visited with Oxfam America’s partner organization Zion Travelers Cooperative Center (ZTCC).

Reverend Tyrone Edwards, Founding Executive Director of ZTCC, is a lifelong community organizer and a tireless advocate for coastal communities affected by hurricanes and last year’s BP oil spill. Edwards often says that if coastal erosion and the emission of gas and other toxins are allowed to continue, our children’s future will be robbed. That’s one reason that his organization started a program to educate and involve Louisiana youth in coastal restoration, hurricane protection, and the broader environmental movement.

Rose Butler of the Bayou Rebirth Wetlands Education Program shows children from Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana how to do water quality tests. Photo by: Rev. Tyrone Edwards / Zion Travelers Cooperative Center.

I saw firsthand how the kids ZTTC works with feel connected to the environment. Since most of them are teenagers, they remember what Katrina did to their lives. When I visited with them, they were preparing to plant seed grass on the side of levees. This work is vital to coastal restoration because the overall objective is to rebuild land, and their work is the starting block for that to happen. The kids seem to be conscious that by fighting to protect and rebuild this land, they are protecting their very futures.  As one of the kids jokingly said, “If we don’t fix this place then we won’t live here soon.”

Participating in this work seems to build up their self-esteem as well.  One said, “Rev. Edwards is the man because he listens to us.  Our opinions are important, and he wants us to back them up with work.  If we think of something to do, he’ll say let’s go do it and see what happens.”

Edwards has been doing community organizing and youth empowerment for 41 years.  He makes sure these young people have a place at the table for whatever he’s working on because he realizes that coastal restoration may not be completed in his lifetime, so he wants to make sure he can hand the mantle off to the next generation to make sure the work gets done.

These kids’ energy and capacity to understand the magnitude of what’s happening in Plaquemines Parish continues to inspire me.  Edwards would assert that he could fix Plaquemines with enough money and the kids in his program.

Skye Wheeler is the Humanitarian Press Officer for Oxfam America.

As the English wife of an American I am occasionally called upon to defend our royal family.  “What are they for?” people ask.

A discussion about the Windsor family is beyond the scope of this short blog but I was glad to see William and Kate providing one answer to the question today in Copenhagen where they toured UNICEF’s enormous warehouse to bring attention to the drought in east Africa right now.  In Somalia the drought, together with conflict there and a lack of development over many years, has amounted to more than 750,000 people at risk of dying from famine.

William and Kate join their voices with other celebrities who have already tried to call attention to the massive humanitarian emergency in the horn of Africa right now.

Oxfam ambassadors Scarlett Johansson and Kristin Davis have brought attention to the very difficult situation hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees in Kenya are facing.  Read about Scarlett Johansson and Kristin Davis‘ trips to East Africa, and how they responded to the stories they heard in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp (the world’s biggest). And learn about Djimon Hounsou’s Twitter fund-raising campaign for Oxfam’s work in East Africa.

Oxfam Ambassador Scarlett Johansson meets with a camp leader in the Dadaab Camp, Northern Kenya. Photo: Andy Hall/Oxfam

Celebrities are important messengers for crises like this one. They get people interested in something that otherwise might feel just like something happening very far away.  But they’re also just people and have normal people reactions to seeing this kind of hardship.  Dadaab’s security situation is too bad right now to make a royal visit likely any time soon, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see how Kate and William would respond to the world’s biggest refugee camp?

Oxfam aims to reach more than 3 million people throughout East Africa with a variety of support, including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are drilling and repairing wells and distributing fuel vouchers to ensure that pumps on the wells can keep operating—even if people have no money. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.