building resiliencestory and photo by jennifer hardy back to business in nepal kumari gurung knits...

Goats and hope in Rwanda

Open for repairs in Egypt

Back in business in NepalIn this issue:

BUILDING RESILIENCE

Wooden Bell TM

The

Nobody hears the cries of the poor,or the sound of a wooden bell.

Haitian proverb

Volume 27, No. 4 SUMMER 2016

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The Wooden Bell™ is published to keep our donors

informed about the lifesaving work of

Catholic Relief Services.

Archbishop Paul Coakley Archdiocese of Oklahoma City

Chair, Board of Directors

Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo President & CEO

Mark Melia Executive Vice President,

Charitable Giving

Writer/Editor: Mike Gesker

Senior Art Director: Irene Leizer

Senior Managing Editor: Ellen Gortler

Copy Editors: Natalie Holmes

Greta Knapp

R

The power of resilience

Catholic Relief Services The Wooden Bell TM3

Therese Umuhire with the goat she bought at a livestock fair—a collaboration between CRS and Keurig Green Mountain Inc. in Rwanda. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl for CRS

Published in August 2016

esilience is the ability to bounce back— to overcome hardship, disasters and tragedy. Catholic Relief Services is a world leader in giving people the means and the skills they need be more resilient in the face of the most difficult circumstances. We don’t need to give them the determination. They already have that in abundance.

Take Kumari Gurung, who is featured on page 5. She’s bouncing back and rebuilding amidst the rubble left by the devastating 2015 earthquake in Nepal. With help from CRS, Kumari has found a way to reopen the doors of her hotel and plan for her family’s future in the business.

CRS is also helping farmers overcome long-standing drought conditions in Ethiopia. One of them is Isike Abdukerim, a father of nine, who is coaxing

healthful crops from a keyhole garden built with techniques developed by CRS.

Fudia Lansana, in Sierra Leone, is one of millions of people benefiting from CRS health and nutrition programs around the world. With Ebola affecting so many people in the West African country, the resilience to overcome both the disease and hunger is truly critical. Thanks to CRS and our partners, Fudia can invest in her farm and take care of her family.

Our emergency response and recovery work in Nepal, our agriculture programming in Ethiopia, and our health projects in Sierra Leone all contribute to the resilience of individuals, families and communities. Their very lives depend on it. ;

Isike Abdukerim learned how to grow vegetables in a keyhole garden through a CRS project in Ethiopia. Photo by Petterik Wiggers for CRS

Top left: Simran Gurung with her baby sister, Shreya, survived an earthquake in Nepal. CRS helped rebuild their family’s business. Photo by Jennifer Hardy/CRS

Above right: Workers plant seedlings in Sierra Leone, where CRS is supporting farmers following the Ebola crisis. Photo by Michael Stulman/CRS

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hen Therese Umuhire looks at her new goat, she envisions, well, something else.

“I dream of when I will get a cow from that goat,” she says, as it grazes on a hillside in southern Rwanda.

Therese joined one of many farmers’ groups supported by CRS and our partners. These groups help growers support their families even when their harvests can’t.

Among the benefits are vouchers to buy animals at livestock fairs. Livestock and seed fairs are an integral part of CRS agricultural programming around the world. The livestock—including goats, pigs and chickens—increase farmers’ resilience by providing milk, meat or eggs.

With roughly $26.50 in vouchers, Therese made her purchase at a fair from a woman—her neighbor—being pulled in all directions by a half dozen goats that Therese had long admired. As animals and people jostled around her, Therese bargained the goat’s price down by more than 25 percent—from roughly $36 to $26.50.

The animal now provides manure for her kitchen garden and coffee crop.

She said that eventually she would breed it, sell the offspring and use the proceeds to buy a cow. Profits from cow’s milk would allow her a bit of financial breathing room.

“I never thought I would own a goat before because we are so poor. That goat will be the start of having more money. I will be careful with that goat,” Therese says. ;

he earthquake that devastated communities in central Nepal on April 25, 2015, not only turned Kumari Gurung’s home in Hansapur to rubble, it destroyed her business too.

“I had a hotel with 22 beds. It was large and beautiful,” she says. “When the earthquake happened, it fully collapsed. My small granddaughter was trapped, and we couldn’t get to her until my son came to dig her out.”

Her granddaughter and the entire family survived, although thousands of other families in the region still mourn their loved ones. Along with the staggering loss of life, the earthquake destroyed 500,000 homes and businesses.

The aftershock of coping with how to cook rice when all of the kitchen utensils were crushed, cobbling

together a shelter, and wondering when help would come, eventually gave way to thoughts about the longer term.

Kumari had depended on the hotel for 14 years. Now everything was precarious. But Catholic Relief Services was there to help with immediate relief and support for rebuilding her business.

“With the money provided by CRS, and with some money of my own that I added, I made this temporary hotel that we are sleeping in now,” Kumari says.

And she adds, “I have provided this hotel business to my son and daughter-in-law. If they can do better with the business I will be happy. If they have more income and can provide for my grandchildren’s study, I will be full of joy.” ;

5Catholic Relief Services The Wooden Bell TM

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Laura Elizabeth Pohl is a freelance photojournalist based in Kigali, Rwanda.

Therese Umuhire, with her baby, can provide for her family thanks to a CRS livestock fair where she bought a goat.

Story and photo by Jennifer Hardy

Back to business in Nepal

Kumari Gurung knits clothing to supplement her family’s income. Her hotel was destroyed in the Nepal earthquake of 2015.

Jennifer Hardy is the CRS regional information officer for East and South Asia, based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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Goats and hope in Rwanda

Story and photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl



Learning, responding and adapting in Ethiopia

The REAAP project works with farmers like Isike Abdukerim so they can cultivate food despite a devastating drought. Photo by Petterik Wiggers for CRS

Kim Pozniak is the CRS director of communications, based in Baltimore.

s the sun bears down on a small clinic in a remote area of Ethiopia, about a half dozen mothers, with their infants strapped to their backs, gather on the porch of a small health center.

They settle down on benches, and a young woman greets them. Her name is Samia Abrahim, and she’s a health extension worker who also serves as a lactation consultant in this rural district.

Samia starts talking about exclusive breastfeeding—giving infants only breast milk for the first 6 months—and sharing other lessons from a Catholic Relief Services program that trains community leaders on healthy practices and nutrition.

Samia approaches a woman, Kadija Abdelahi, who’s holding her 6-month-old son, Amar Yusuf. Samia shows Kadija how to position the baby for breastfeeding, making sure he latches on without causing pain. Kadija smiles broadly as the baby begins to nurse. After Samia repositions Amar’s head, mother and baby are well on their way.

“This is quite different,” Kadija says. “I gave birth to my first four children not knowing anything. What I learned today is totally different from my experience.” As Amar, her fifth child, nurses quietly, she says, “I heard about exclusive breastfeeding but I didn’t know the technique or how often to nurse.”

These valuable lessons are part of a CRS project with a 3-year goal to help half a million people who are most affected by Ethiopia’s recurring droughts. ;

A armers everywhere look to the sky for the two elements they need most: sun and water. Ethiopia gets a lot of sun, but has not had much rain this year. In fact, the country is in the midst of the worst drought in half a century. Food supplies are dangerously short.

CRS and our partners have mounted a major emergency response—in collaboration with the Ethiopian government—to help people survive.

We are taking a long-term approach by providing lifesaving food and addressing the hardships Ethiopians are facing because of drought.

Isike Abdukerim, a father of nine, is among those who received tools, seeds and training to make a keyhole garden—a raised-bed garden for growing vegetables. Layers of soil, rock and sand insulate the garden and conserve water.

“With only a little water, I can harvest vegetables all year,” Isike says. “The main advantage of

the gardens is the ability to grow vegetables, even during drought. Having vegetables has a good benefit for my family. Vegetables prevent diseases and malnutrition, and provide a more balanced diet.

“Before the keyhole gardens, making vegetables a part of our diet was not known in this area,” Isike says. Today, there are 102 keyhole gardens in his community of 10 small villages. ;

F

Samia Abrahim helps Kadija Abdelahi learn how to nurse after receiving CRS training as a health extension worker. Photo by Petterik Wiggers for CRS

Stories by Kim Pozniak



I

t took more than 30 years for Mohammed to build up his engine repair shop in Damascus. It took an instant for a bomb to destroy everything.

Mohammed is among the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees starting new lives in Egypt—a country where jobs were already scarce. Myriad legal hurdles prevent most of them from obtaining work permits. Many are left to eke out a living with little job security and low wages.

Catholic Relief Services is helping the refugees through a project that provides business and legal training, and startup capital. The project supports refugees and asylum seekers from all nationalities living in Egypt, but a significant portion are Syrians.

“The training is meant to help clients establish more resilient businesses because they can better navigate challenges and solve problems when they arise,” explains Yumiko Texidor, who oversees the project.

Mohammed lives in a cramped apartment in the greater Cairo area with his wife, their four sons and his mother. “It is painful to leave the country where you grew up,” he says. “When we were leaving, I cried for 2 days.”

The CRS project has given his family a thread of hope by helping him open a new engine repair shop. On a weekday afternoon, the shop—about the size of a single-car garage—is a flurry of activity.

“I want to thank CRS for giving me a new beginning,” he says.

What keeps him going despite all he’s suffered? “To rescue my sons. To guarantee them a good lifestyle,” he says. ;

udia Lansana once thought that nothing could be as terrifying as becoming one of the 14,000 people infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone. But as her household of nine went from eating three meals a day to one, Fudia realized she was facing something just as scary: hunger.

Fudia survived for months on savings and borrowed money. But with the Ebola outbreak over, she and other farmers still feel its effects.

Thanks to Catholic Relief Services and support from the U.S. Agency for International Development Food for Peace program, they are receiving cash assistance. The monthly $30 distributions target 23,762 people in an extremely poor district of Sierra Leone where people are chronically malnourished.

Recipients can choose what to buy, but the CRS project encourages them to improve their diets by buying—or growing—more fruits and vegetables.

Fudia chose to invest her first $30 in her farm. “I’ve learned about nutrition and health care. I can take care of the family, improve my farm and eat well,” she says. “Food brings life, and with this money, I’m getting more life.” ;

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Nikki Gamer is the CRS communications officer for Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, based in Baltimore.

After Ebola, feeding the hungry Story and photo by

Michael Stulman

Story and photo by Nikki Gamer

Repairing engines, restarting lives

Mohammed, a Syrian refugee living in Egypt, has been able to open a repair shop thanks to a CRS project helping refugees with startups.

Michael Stulman is the CRS regional information officer for western and central Africa, based in Dakar, Senegal.

‘ Food brings life, and with this money, I'm getting more life.’ —Fudia Lansana

Fudia Lansana, an Ebola survivor, purchased rice and other essential food with cash grants from CRS.



In partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, Catholic Relief Services will provide humanitarian relief and recovery assistance to the people of Gaza in the aftermath of the war 2 years ago.

“The situation in Gaza has become increasingly dire,” says Matt McGarry, CRS country representative for Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. “We hope that with this award, we can do our small part to make a genuine, lasting difference in people’s lives.”

The program will help vulnerable Gazans build resilience and self-reliance by meeting their immediate needs and providing employment opportunities. ;

GlobalUpdateEarthquake Recovery in Ecuador

Rebuilding Lives in Gaza

Drought Relief in Lesotho

Above: Carla Tardillo’s grandmother, Rosa Zambrano, received a temporary shelter from CRS after the Ecuadorian earthquake destroyed her home.

Left: CRS and Caritas helped build temporary shelters in the most damaged areas. Photos by Eduardo Naranjo for CRS

In April 2016, a 7.8- magnitude earthquake hit Ecuador, killing more than 500 people. In all, 7,000 buildings were destroyed, and 26,000 people need new homes.

Catholic Relief Services teams in Ecuador helped thousands of people build shelters from tarps, wood, and local materials such as bamboo or sugarcane, with zinc for the roofs. CRS also delivered hygiene kits with soap and toothbrushes. ;

In Lesotho, hundreds of thousands of people are experiencing a food and water crisis as a result of a severe drought. Nearly 1 million people are affected, and the government of Lesotho has declared a state of emergency. Catholic Relief Services and our partners on the ground are distributing water purification tablets, making vegetable seeds available to 4,000 households to use as food or a source of income, and beginning to provide cash and vouchers so families can buy food. ;

Donate your used vehicle today!Easy as 1 ... 2 ... 3➊ Call or visit us online

➋ Schedule your free pickup

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Just call us toll free at 855-990-4483 or visit crs.org/cars

CRS continues to rebuild schools and homes in Gaza that were destroyed in fighting. Photos by Shareef Sarhan for CRS


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building resiliencestory and photo by jennifer hardy back to business in nepal kumari gurung knits...

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