By Andrea Vogt | International Director Operation Mercy
Dear friends of Operation Mercy,
I hope you all had a good start to 2025! This project, which you support so faithfully is about hope, capacity and community - so let me ask you:
Are you going into the new year with hope? Not just hoping it will be ok, but with a hopeful heart and spirit? If so, what are you building your hope on?
We at Operation Mercy have found that two key ingredients for hope are capacity and community.
So how have you invested in your own capacity over the last year? How will you do so in 2025? What new thing do you want to explore and where do you want to grow in understanding, skill or proficiency?
Do you have a community to grow in and grow with? Is your capacity contributing to the capacity of your community?
Are you building something together?
Whatever your answers to these questions are, one community that you are part of is this one, right here. You are part of the Operation Mercy family! We continue to grow our capacity and have seen hope restored and flourishing over the last weeks, months and years!
One of the things that kept me, as International Director, on the edge of my chair over the last few months, was our work in Afghanistan. The need of the community, especially those of women and children, is enormous. One would think that all hope is crushed as the laws and regulations become tighter and tighter, and sadly, funding becomes harder and harder to raise.
But since August, we have received permission for two new neighbourhood clinics, providing primary health care, maternal and child health, and nutrition to the people of Afghanistan. We also teach and train women and men in these neighbourhoods about health, nutrition, pregnancy and childbirth. As universities close for women and girls, informal education like these short courses will become more important and lifesaving.
We have seen enormous capacity in our network and friends to provide the funds needed for this work, sometimes literally the day before salaries and bills were due, and always enough to keep going. Some of you are part of this too.
So, as I am amazed at the capacity of the Operation Mercy network and community, the capacity of the local and international staff in Afghanistan, and in many other Operation Mercy countries, my hope and joy grow and bubble over as I think of all the communities, women, men and children who were blessed in 2024.
Because we stand together as Operation Mercy friends and community, communities out there are growing in their capacity - and can rekindle their hope for the future.
More about all that happened in 2024 will be in our annual report in a few weeks. We will let you know when this is completed on our website and social media, and also here.
Thanks for building community, capacity and hope with us in 2025!
Links:
By Steven Smalley | Project Supervisor
By Andrea Vogt | International Director Operation Mercy
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