Dutch entrepreneurs use their ICT-knowledge to offer young, talented Suriname people a job and an income. They do this in co-creation with ICCO. Youngsters in the rural areas of Suriname hardly have any access to professional education. Because of this, companies in these regions have problems finding good educated staff. Consequence is that the economic development in these areas stays behind. The lack of professional education is not the only reason Suriname stays behind. Children are being raised different then in the Netherlands. A passive, docile attitude is the norm. While in the ICT-branch initiative, teamwork and taking responsibility are wanted.

Disasters of every scale hit hardest in communities that are the least prepared and the poorest. In Kuala Bubon, like other coastal villages across Indonesia’s Aceh and Nias islands, most people rely on the sea and farming for their livelihoods.

When the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami hit on 26 December 2004, these communities had little or no emergency response capacity.

The effects were devastating. In Indonesia alone, the tsunami caused an estimated 167,736 deaths, with 37,063 missing persons, and left more than 500,000 people homeless. In Kuala Bubon, it took the lives of 221 people and swept away the entire village, leaving nothing but traumatised survivors.

The global humanitarian aid mobilised for the disaster was considered the largest ever, in terms of international pledges and donations, and it was the fastest financial response to disaster.

The event 10 years ago became a catalyst for a significant change in perspective on effective disaster response, implemented in the “build back better” approach. This approach is not merely about rebuilding houses and infrastructure, but also about rebuilding people’s lives and dignity.

It encourages communities, NGOs and governments to focus on ensuring people’s rights in the aftermath of a disaster – restoring livelihoods, providing psychosocial support, and building the capacity of local communities in disaster preparedness.

ACT Alliance members mobilised their resources to respond to the disaster with a total funding of more than US$50m, reflecting the extent of the global solidarity and giving hope to people across the affected region.

Right after the end of the Sri Lankan conflict in 2009, ACT member ECLOF Sri Lanka engaged in the post-conflict zone of Mannar which had been devastated after 30 years of fighting. In partnership with Episcopal Relief Development, ECLOF Sri Lanka began serving the resettled communities in the area, mostly support­ing agriculture and fishery, the traditional income sources of these communities.

Special attention was given to developing the prom­ising business of dairy farming through credit and associated training. The government fixes the prices for dairy products, and lately two large commercial milk collection centers were opened to purchase fresh milk in the area. In communities close to the sea, fishing is another trade ECLOF actively sup­ports. In total, 86% of ECLOF’s loans in the area support agriculture and fishery.

ECLOF Sri Lanka works almost exclusively with women who organize themselves in solidarity soci­eties upon ECLOF’s guidance. With support from local government, ECLOF provides not just loans but communal association and skills development, training women on leadership, self-empowerment, entrepreneurship and marketing before providing loans to develop their livelihood. ECLOF thereby complements the government’s reconstruction efforts which have brought much-needed infrastruc­ture investment recently.

In 2014, an external evaluation of ECLOF Sri Lanka’s work in the post-conflict zone was undertaken, involving focus group discussions with 75 beneficia­ries and individual interviews with 55 beneficiaries. The positive impact of the program was evident. It had enabled women to engage in income gen­eration, taking advantage of profitable investment opportunities and developing micro enterprises. It had also smoothened consumption and reduced reliance on expensive informal sources of credit. 62% found that their living standard had increased: there were improvements in housing (better roofing, water and sanitation), children schooling rates, pur­chase of agro machinery and enhanced transport with bicycles and motorcycles.

Specifically for women, the greatest changes included greater involvement in family decision mak­ing (72% agreement), a bigger role in household cash generation, more sharing of household respon­sibilities and increased ownership of assets.

88% of respondents noted that credit had been the most important factor for their income generating activities.

While not all of these changes can be directly attributed to ECLOF’s intervention, it can be con­cluded that the positive impact of micro credit and associated training and community development has become very visible in the Mannar area.

ACT Alliance members joined over 15,000 people to march the streets of Peru calling for climate justice. The march took place during the UN Climate Change conference in Lima, Peru in December 2014. In this video, ACT General Secretary John Nduna speaks about why this march is so important, and the role of ACT Alliance in the climate justice arena.

Heavy monsoon rains hit 17 districts in the mid and western regions of Nepal in August 2014, causing the worst destruction Nepal has seen since flooding in 2008.

More than 12,000 houses were destroyed, another 13,695 partially damaged, and a massive 40,055 flooded. The extreme weather saw cattle, ducks, chicken and fish washed away or buried, and the destruction of crop supplies.

The result was mass displacement of people, with 12,276 families made homeless and left with nothing. Waterlogged farmland became useless to farmers, and the remaining yield was much lower than usual.

ACT response

ACT members provided immediate life-saving assistance and psychosocial support to around 2,000 severely affected and displaced families. Assistance included basic and supplementary food rations, non-food items, emergency shelter and other daily necessities.

Many of the areas affected were left inaccessible because of the rains, with some sections of road washed away or buried by landslides, and electrical supplies and telephone services cut off.

According to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IRFC), the floods and landslides claimed the lives of 202 people, with 248 still missing at the end of 2014.

Cyclone Hudhud hit India’s east coast in mid-October 2014, primarily affecting the state of Andhra Pradesh, most significantly the port city of Visakhapatnam. It also struck the state of Odisha, which experienced heavy rainfall.

The deafening winds of 190km/h claimed the lives of 41 people and injured many more. Hudhud caused extensive devastation to housing, electrical infrastructure, standing crops and livestock.

It affected 471 villages, and relief for more than 280,000 people had to be provided by the government with the support of the Indian Army, the National Disaster Response Force and various other organisations.

The National Highway and other important thoroughfares were cleared, but with limited resources they were unable to reach out to people in more rural villages.

ACT response

ACT members therefore had a significant presence in these areas, where the communities who depended mainly on farming as their livelihood source saw Hudhud devastate rice, banana, coconut and sugarcane plantations.

ACT provided immediate food assistance and worked with the community to establish a food security and livelihood restoration programme.

The districts of Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram were plunged into darkness after the electrical system completely collapsed: over 40,000 electricity cables snapped and 7,500 electrical transformers were damaged.

ACT therefore worked with communities to implement solar renewable energy sources to bring light to the affected areas.

In January 2014, the Government of Guinea in West Africa declared an outbreak of the Ebola virus. Since then, Ebola spread to the neighbouring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone, causing an epidemic that at the end of 2014 had caused 24,754 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

There had been 11,794 deaths in Sierra Leone, 9,555 in Liberia and 3,404 in Guinea. Because of a lack of knowledge about the disease, Ebola quickly became a source of stigma and terror.

ACT members responding to the epidemic identified two key issues:

• the need for more healthcare locations and resources, and
• a need to raise preventative awareness to stop the disease spreading.

As a first step, ACT members constructed an isolation segment in the compound of Liberia’s Phebe Hospital and School of Nursing, and made provisional plans to procure medical supplies.

In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, besides the high mortality rate, Ebola patients were often abandoned or rejected not only by healthcare workers fearing infection but by their families and friends due to fear and shame. Added to this, survivors had to deal with deaths of their colleagues, friends and family also in isolation.

Working on the premise that the best way to protect people was to prevent the spread of the disease and remove the social stigma attached to it, ACT members initiated educational projects with 5,830 people in Liberia to increase understanding of measures that can be taken to prevent contamination and spread of the disease. These projects were set up in the Bong and Lofa counties, and the subsequent decline in the number of new cases there was thought to be partly due to these interventions.

In addition, multiple meetings and workshops were set up to raise awareness and sensitisation among a further 14,270 people.

In Sierra Leone, sensitisation work was undertaken directly with 9,000 people, and food and non-food assistance was given to 100 families who had suffered deaths or survived infection. More than 400 families were given psychosocial support and 40 orphans given nutrition and health support.

When the Ebola epidemic was at its peak, fear meant that people refrained from leaving their homes to work, resulting in reduced food production and a consequent rise in malnutrition.

ACT members helped vulnerable families by providing them with rice and soup, and extended this service to specific hospitals to help reduce the risk of malnutrition among Ebola patients.

© Act Alliance / Paul Jeffrey

In September 2014, the United Protestant Church of Belgium received an urgent letter Protestant churches in Syria and Lebanon, telling the suffering experienced by the civilian population in this region. Nearly three million people have fled Syria to seek refuge in camps in neighboring countries. More than half of these refugees are children. We lack basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, blankets, clothing and medical assistance. Fighting make it difficult for aid to refugees difficult when the needs are only increasing with the approach of winter. A gathering is organized within the EPUB, whose fruit will be donated to ACT Alliance to support aid in Syria and neighboring countries.

To answer the cry of alarm coming from Syria, any gesture of support is welcome!

You can initiate supportive action or collection within your parish, or simply make a donation to the account of Solidarity with the Protestant “Emergency Syria” communication: IBAN BE37 0680 6690 1028 / BIC GKCCBEBB .

Donations from private individuals over 40 euros a year are entitled to a tax certificate. For more information, please contact Rob van Drimmelen, Secretary of the Church Committee in the Company / EPUB: vandrimmelen.krabbe@numericable.be.

Joani Santana, 17, was a star student but she was pulled out of school for the simple reason she doesn’t have a birth certificate.

New laws in the Dominican Republic require Joani to have identity papers in order to study.

“I don’t have the documents,” she explains. “I was born in the Dominican Republic but my parents came to the country from Haiti to cut sugar cane and the only ID they were given is a sugar plantation work card. My mother wasn’t given a birth certificate for me when I was born and even though I’ve now proved that I was born here I can’t get documents because of my parents’ immigration status.”

Her story is common. Ana Maria Velique, 28 was born in the Dominican Republic and had all her documents in perfect order including her Dominican ID card and passport when she turned up at university to enrol.

Years earlier, her parents came to the country under one of the many agreements with Haiti to bring in cheap labour. However, these agreements failed to confer legal status to those workers.

When Ana Maria went to enrol at university she found that under the new law her nationality had been withdrawn because of her parents’ status.

She was refused admission and with it, the hope of better prospects in life. Both Joani and Ana Maria, along with an estimated 200,000 other Dominicans of Haitian descent have become stateless — neither the Dominican nor the Haitian government recognises them.

Caught in this no-man’s land Ana Maria took her case to court where the judge found in her favour and instructed the Central Electoral Board (JCE) to furnish her with a birth certificate.

Not only did the JCE refuse to accept the ruling, it responded with its own legal counter-case requesting the court annul her birth certificate.

A window of opportunity to allow people disadvantaged by the law the chance to get their papers in order has a deadline this month, though after vigorous appeals by human rights groups this may be extended by 90 days.

“But for many of those affected it doesn’t matter if the window remains open for 1,000 days,” says Dominican economist Roque Felix. “Resolving the problem is extremely difficult, expensive and in many cases, simply impossible. Even when conditions are met, government departments often don’t apply the law.”

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission insists that law 168-13, which withdraws nationality from people born in the Dominican Republic, is illegal.

But the government uses language of sovereignty to argue its right to determine its own laws, Felix says. Other organisations, such as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and several countries, including the US, have condemned the law and are pressuring the government to find a solution.

“The new law legalises what the Dominican state has been doing illegally since the 1990s — refusing to give Haitian immigrants the identity documents they need to work, register the birth of their children, get married, take national exams, attend public university, open bank accounts and many other civil activities. And now, despite government assurances that they would stop, deportations are continuing,” adds Felix.

President Danilo Medina is taking steps to solve the problem but two key institutions — the ministry of migration and the JCE — are held by nationalist party Fuerza Nacional Progresista (FNP), which is pushing hard for these discriminatory laws to be retained.

Ironically, Medina’s own party is in coalition with the FNP.

“A recent Gallup poll found that 87 per cent of people across the country do not support the extreme measures against Dominicans of Haitian descent but there is still no solution in sight,” says Felix.

ACT member SSID works with Dominicans of Haitian descent. At its general assembly, the ACT Alliance, has roundly condemned the ruling, saying Dominicans of Haitian descent have the right to citizenship.