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.”

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

A community of 1,367 families were uprooted from central Phnom Penh in June 2006 and forcibly relocated to open swamp land in Andong, 13 miles from the city and their livelihoods.

Why? To make way for a shopping mall that is yet to be built.

Acclaimed photographer Emma Hardy traveled to Cambodia to capture the story of this community and others, fighting to reclaim their rights to own, inhabit, and work the land they once owned. She describes what she saw in Andong slum:

“Seven years on, these families are still waiting for public services. Their latrine is an open field. Water for washing and cooking is piped in rickety plastic hoses at uncertain times of day and stored in large open earthenware jars standing in shockingly-polluted water. In the rainy seasons most makeshift homes are practically submerged in sewage water. In drier months, the stench is overwhelming. Dysentery is rife. Dengue fever and cholera are chronic. These relocated communities have not, to date, received ‘even one grain of rice in compensation.’”

Below are five photos from Hardy, some of which will be featured in a pop-up gallery exhibit in Washington, DC, from April 10^th to the 21^st. (See invite here.) The exhibit was created in support of Oxfam’s efforts to bring attention to global land grabs and was first featured in The Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine.

The pictures speak for themselves.

(1) Street view, Andong slum

(2) Woman collecting water snails for food

(3) Slum dog

(4) Sor Sat, Executive Director of the Cambodian non-profit, Action for Environment and Communities, after a long meeting

(5) Daughter of land activists at a meeting

Around the world, a rush to grab land is underway. Land the size of the California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico combined was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for the one billion people who go hungry today.

The World Bank influences how land is bought and sold on a global scale. It has the power to step in and play a vital role in stopping land injustice.

Now, just before the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, encourage the World Bank to take action to halt the speed and scale of land grabbing around the world. Let them know the world is watching. Add your voice here.

Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens recently visited Haiti to document our work on revitalizing rice farming and reducing the risk of disasters—including outbreaks of cholera.

If I had to choose one place to sit and learn about a rural town in Haiti, I’ve decided, it would have to be the community well. In places where there is no running water, the local well has a steady stream of visitors, and everyone has a story.

Even the well has a story.

"We love the Oxfam staff here," said Jean Jose. "They've given good advice and really helped us get rid of cholera." Photo: Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam

On a November afternoon in the town of Atchevrot, Marchand Dessalines, my Oxfam colleagues and I crossed a rickety bridge over an irrigation channel to the place where villagers were collecting water.

Jean Jose—the man who dug the well with his machete back in 1984—joined us there, and Valeus Wislor, the engineer that Oxfam hired to fix it up last year was with us, too. The concrete cover, sand filter, hand pump, and drainage channel were his work.  And gathered around the well to meet us that day were members of a team—trained by Oxfam partners from El Salvador—that is helping communities of the lower Artibonite Valley protect their water supplies from cholera bacteria and prepare for emergencies of all kinds. Read more about this program.

The team leader’s name is Philippe Merisson, and he is a middle school teacher. We learned that day that he is also a master in the Haitian martial art of stick fighting, and he told us a little about it. A stick fighter, he explained, learns to anticipate and block blows from all directions—even in the dark. Even when the stick is swapped out for a machete.

Read the rest of this entry »

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

Oxfam and our partners have helped restore 4,700 acres of land to cultivation by clearing and repairing irrigation channels. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam

The muddy water coursing along the roadsides and through the rice fields of the Artibonite Valley plays a prominent role in the lives of rice farmers.  Rivers and channels nourish the rice, the vegetables, the goats and cows, and the riot of greenery in the countryside.  But when storms and hurricanes strike, it’s those same waterways that overflow and carry away livestock, drown the crops, contaminate wells, and deliver deadly cholera bacteria to rural communities.

If the water moves freely through the channels—unimpeded by sediment, weeds, and debris—the risks subside, and the benefits can transform communities, which is why we’ve focused resources on helping farmers clear more than 60 miles of irrigation canals.

Dubuisson is one of the towns where we’ve been working, and I visited there with an Oxfam team last month. Clearing channels isn’t all we’re up to in this area.  We and our partner have  introduced methods of improving rice yields, provided access to low-interest loans, and helped boost the vegetable harvest in the off season for rice. But here what people talked about most was what it’s meant to them to restore irrigation to fields that had gone dry.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nancy Delaney is Oxfam America’s Community Engagement Manager.

Doesn’t matter, let come what may
I ain’t ever going to leave this town
This city won’t wash away
This city won’t ever drown.

Steve Earle’s haunting lyrics from “This City,” heard at the end of season two of “Treme,” bring me right back to New Orleans as does each episode of the show. “Treme,” the award-winning HBO series now in its third season, depicts New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In my view this is television at its best. The combination of story, writers, actors, and of course setting, the city of New Orleans, is pitch perfect. I was introduced to New Orleans many years ago by one of my sisters, and have been drawn back many times since. The first thing that struck me was the music – where else can you hear jazz, zydeco, conjunto and Cajun all in a one block area? Then there’s the food. And of course there are the people of New Orleans.

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Megan Weintraub is Oxfam America’s New Media manager.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a truly unique film directed by Benh Zeitlin, is part magical tale and part heroine’s quest. It tells the story of Hushpuppy, a stubborn six-year-old resident of a region along the US Gulf coast called the Bathtub.

Early in the movie, we learn that the area is aptly named as drenching rain falls fast and dislodges its community members from their homes. The hurricane leaves Hushpuppy and her father, Wink, floating in a boat along the flood waters in search of their friends, a cast of characters as charmingly quirky and upbeat as they are dignified and resilient. In the wake of the storm, the band of friends shares meals and pools its resources while plotting how to stay in the Bathtub despite local government pressure to move to nearby disaster housing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Skye Wheeler is a Humanitarian Press Officer for Oxfam America.

A best friend is getting married 24 hours after I get back from here. “Here” is the beautiful, troubled eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where a recent surge of violence has caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

Marceline Habyarimana sews a dress in Kibati IDP camp on the outskirts of Goma, eastern DRC. Photo: Skye Wheeler / Oxfam America

The fact I have nothing to wear for a wedding is not at the front of my mind as I walk around Kibati camp on the outskirts of Goma town where Oxfam is trucking water and building latrines. The camp houses some 60,000 people and more are arriving every day having fled yet more conflict. In every direction are shelters of branches covered in tarpaulin. Inside are beds of leaves. Some families are sleeping out in the open and it seems everyone struggles to find enough food to eat.

But among the hundreds of white tarp-covered shelters is a splash of color. Marceline has set up shop. She cuts a long rectangle out of a piece of eye-wateringly bright material patterned with flowers and then, her foot paddling her sewing machine into action, she calmly turns it into a sleeve. The Congolese have a great passion for intensely colored material, boldly depicting drums or favorite beers, presidents, leopards etc. cut into dramatic dresses.

“(As we ran) I carried the sewing machine on my head and my husband carried the table,” Marceline said. She charges about 1,500 Congolese Francs to make a dress (less than $2). Her clients are from Goma town. “These people don’t have any money,” she says, indicating the sea of shelters around her with her large tailor’s scissors.

I wonder if I could pull off one of her gorgeous dresses. But it’s not for sale; it’s been ordered. Neither are fellow tailor Gaspard’s dresses and shirts. “I don’t have money to buy material,” he said “I have to wait for clients to bring cloth.”

I am not the only one looking for clothes. I meet a young man who was recruited by an armed group. He spent a month and a half carrying a bag of mobile telephones for a commander who frequently threatened to kill him. He escaped shedding the uniform he had been given as he ran, arriving in the camp in underwear. The blue jeans and shirt he now wears were loaned. “But he wants them back now,” he said.

Melvin Elias Fuentes, a community leader trained to help provide clean water during emergencies in El Salvador. Photo by Rene Figueroa/Oxfam America

This blog was written by Tjarda Muller, Oxfam America’s communications officer in San Salvador.

I’m thinking back six months ago—to February—when I was in the field with Elizabeth Stevens, Oxfam America’s humanitarian communications officer. Together with technicians from our partner organizations, we were visiting rural communities across El Salvador. The weather was hot and a big bottle of water was my constant companion. Water: a commodity so ordinary for many of us. But there in remote areas, water doesn’t flow fresh and clear out of a tap. It comes from hand-dug wells and is often highly contaminated. If Elizabeth or I were to drink it, we’d definitely get sick. But so do the people who have no choice but to drink it. Contaminated water isn’t something one’s body easily adapts to and gastrointestinal diseases are common in these villages. During flooding, which happen on a yearly basis, contamination gets even worse. And so do the diseases.

That’s why Oxfam America started training a team of 17 technicians from partner organizations to become specialists in WASH, or water, sanitation and hygiene promotion in emergencies.

Now, during this month of August, the WASH team is celebrating its fifth anniversary. The team has been trained in installing water tanks after emergencies, monitoring water quality, cleaning contaminated latrines and hand-dug wells, fumigation, garbage management and pest control. The reach of the team is national and each member can be deployed instantly to where disaster strikes. Read the rest of this entry »

Noaga Yambeogo plans to help feed her family with vegetables from an irrigated garden. Photo by Andy Hall/Oxfam

You’ve got to admire the focus and drive of a woman like Noaga Yambeogo. She’s a 50-year-old widow in Tansoba, a village in the center north region of Burkina Faso where more than two million people are struggling with a food crisis. They are among more than 18 million across the Sahel region of West Africa hit by the crisis.

But for about 32 women here, hope has arrived one steady drop at a time—through a drip irrigation system that Oxfam and its partner, ATAD, with support from the European Union, have helped to install. It’s part of a development of six areas with market gardens that are allowing 200 women to grow produce to feed their families and to sell.

In Tansoba, Yambeogo, who has four children, is president of the women’s cooperative.

“I was elected because I work hard,” she says. “They thought I could push them to do a good job because I love working myself.”

Anyone who has ever had a vegetable garden knows how labor-intensive it can be, especially if your goal is to produce enough to make a bit of income. And for the women here, the stakes are as high as they can get: The health of their children may depend on what they can coax from the ground. Read the rest of this entry »

Kassa Danfakha: “We need good quality seed, for rice, groundnuts, millet, and maize.” Photo by Brett Eloff/Oxfam America

Kassa Danfakha says usually one of his biggest concerns in the growing season is cows wandering on to his millet field and eating his plants. It’s a significant source of conflict in the community, but last year he had bigger worries.

“Last fall I got almost no harvest. There was not enough rain,” he says, sitting by his home in Bembou, in Senegal’s far eastern Kedougou region. “The first rains came and the seeds we planted started to grow, but then the rain was very irregular. At one point the rain stopped and the plants died.”

“Some more rain came later but we had no more seeds to plant.”

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