Update Against Hunger - February 3, 2006
Field Notes:
Dear Action Against Hunger Team Member,
Beginning with this issue, Update Against Hunger becomes a monthly publication. Instead of every other week, you'll receive a new issue the first week of each month. Meanwhile, we plan to keep you up-to-date with our activities via other e-mails. You're part of the ACF team whether you're reading this in Timbuktu or in Kalamazoo, and we'll intend to keep all our valued teammates in the loop.
No, It's Not a Primitive R2D2Here's an image from our programs in Uganda. Know what it is?
You'll find the answer by scrolling to the bottom of this newsletter.
Cathy Skoula
Executive Director,
Action Against Hunger USA (ACF)
New from US Headquarter:
HQ's Responsibility: Providing The Veteran's Perspective
Most of Action Against Hunger's proposals for new projects come from the field. Our field workers and surveyors assess the degree of local need, then they work with potential beneficiaries to conceive appropriate responses. And because field managers know which donors are active in the area, they generally identify potential sources of support for new projects as well. Next, managers in the field draft requests for grants that will finance the needed projects, and the local Head of Mission signs off on the proposal.
But the proposal isn't complete until the mission's headquarters staff back home weighs in as well. HQ officers have worked in the field, and the knowledge they've accumulated from their experiences can improve proposals. HQ veterans can confirm the accuracy of facts and the adequacy of financial requests. They can assess whether the proposal is too big, too small, or just right. They can ask pertinent questions about the proposal based on their own successes and failures in the field. They can judge whether the request is cast in language that has prompted a generous response from the potential donor in the pastor indeed whether the language is grammatically precise (and therefore accurate in meaning). And finally, HQ personnel can determine whether the proposal fits into Action Against Hunger's international goals and worldwide strategy, a global perspective virtually impossible to maintain in the field.
To eager field workers, HQ's vetting and editing of proposals can sometimes feel like a lack of trust. But in fact, the experienced managers at home work to ensure that operations in the field roll along as efficiently as possible.
News from the field:
Now We're Running Bathhouses
Last week, we opened our first public bathhouse. We've built facilities for showers in refugee camps around the world, of course, but never before have we built public showers for a settled community.
Here's our rationale: The devastation from last October's earthquake in Pakistan was nearly total in many communities. Homes and infrastructures were thoroughly demolished, and local families, most of whom now live in tents, no longer have running water where they live, and even if they did, they'd have no way of heating it. This, of course, compromises hygiene, which can lead to outbreaks of disease.
To forestall such crises, we've built a bathhouse in Balakot, Pakistan. Actually, we're providing two facilities for the community, one for men, another for women. Each building contains 10 shower stalls as well as communal areas for bathing children and washing clothes. For those in need, we also supply soap. We expect the bathhouse to provide up to 500 showers a day for as many as 1,200 Balakotians. We also expect to turn the facilities over to management by the community once the operation is running smoothly. We expect the public showers to operate through next spring, when thaws will enable reconstruction of Pakistan's infrastructure. After that, the community will determine the bathhouse's fate.
Person Profile:
Profile Michael Glueckert
Back from Darfurand Ready for More"People have different religions, different foods, different customs, but in the end they all react similarly," says Michael Glueckert, who most recently served as our Food Security Coordinator in Pakistan. Michael should know. He has worked in more than 20 countries in all parts of the world "except Antarctica," he says. As a result, he has come to know people everywhere and finds himself at ease wherever he happens to be.
Michael was born and raised in Wiesbaden, Germany, near orchards and vineyards that were owned by relatives. An indifferent student, Michael decided he preferred the family fields to a school or an office, so he apprenticed himself to farming family members. After spending time as a farmer, however, he finished his schoolwork with distinction, then studied tropical agronomy at a local university. He volunteered to work for an aid project in Colombia, where he built a farm for street children to socialize them and give them practical skills. Then, to satisfy German laws that mandate either military or public service, he worked on comparable projects first in Nepal, later back in Germany.
After working on an agricultural training project along the Pacific coast in Latin America for the European Union, Michael recognized that he lacked sophisticated computer skills, so he earned a graduate degree in London studying economic development. Eventually he landed a job teaching agricultural economics to Eastern Europeans, at first in Bavaria, later in countries as far east as Kazakhstan and Tajikistan where, following the USSR's dissolution, citizens were acquiring farmland without knowing what to do with it.
After taking on similar assignments around the world, Michael discovered Action Against Hunger when a German organization asked him to make a survey in Asia on our behalf. When he approached us for a job, we assigned him first to Tajikistan, more recently to Pakistan as our food security coordinator. Because our work there is still in its emergency response phase, Michael found himself working mostly on food distribution. However, he also helped plan food security programs to be launched in the future.
Now Michael's back in Wiesbaden but will leave shortly to make nutritional assessments in Northern Kenya. He's perfectly happy to go there, he says. He's comfortable wherever.
