We are a pool of workers that support DFID programmes when disasters or conflict strike. We assess the crisis areas and recommend which partners to work with and what projects to fund. We tend to zip around at short notice. Recently our bloggers have been to the Philippines, Central African Republic, Niger, Zimbabwe and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Given current events in eastern DRC it seems strange to be writing about anything else. M23’s capture of Goma and ongoing push to the South has been widely covered in the international press (Reuters’ coverage has been particularly good). I …
The conflict in Syria shows no sign of abating, yet media interest is waning. The humanitarian needs of the children affected are hardly mentioned and it is hard to understand why. Within Syria alone, 2.5 million people are affected, 1.2 …
Checking in from beautiful eastern DRC where I’ve spent the last week learning from people – from UN agencies and local government to religious leaders and NGOs – about what’s going on and what needs to be done. The message …
Hello and thanks for reading. After a year of managing the UK’s humanitarian programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) based in the capital city Kinshasa, I’m off to the east of the country for a few months. I’m …
As you fly over this arid, dry and dusty land the vast expanse of tented shelters sprawling across the horizon immediately captures your attention. There are almost 400,000 people - a number equivalent to the entire population of Bristol - …
I was unprepared for what I saw at the Dadaab camp in Kenya. Totally unprepared for the utter sense of panic in the people I met there. These were the newcomers, people who could not fit into the largest refugee …
When we are confronted by the image of a child trapped in the rubble of an earthquake, or of a family clinging to the roof of a flooded home, we don’t so much commit to help, as feel committed to …
One early July day, I made my first flight to Africa, was delivered with my blue rucksack to a guest house on Ngong Road in Nairobi, and enjoyed my first encounter with a noisy Mynah bird, singing loudly outside my …
What’s this then? A whole day dedicated to humanitarian workers? Don’t they get enough air time as the face of disasters, recounting tales of untold suffering on our TVs? Well, no, actually. The sad fact is that regardless of how …
The statistics coming from Haiti now are like telephone numbers, numbing our sense of scale. Two million people needing food; up to 800,000 people living in transitional shelter; up to 4000 temporary classrooms needed; some 240,000 pregnant and lactating women …
Recent Comments