Gender Equality Sweden Project #30892

Partnering to build hope, capacity, and community

by Operation Mercy

Project Report | Oct 10, 2022
A capacity building trip to Tajikistan

By Andrea Vogt | International Director Operation Mercy

community mapping in Tajikistan

Dear Friends of Operation Mercy,

Earlier this month I was able to spend significant time with our local partners in Tajikistan.

Our focus as an organisation - and in this project - is to build, hope, capacity, and community. The focus of this visit was capacity building, but it demonstrated once more how closely linked capacity, community, and hope are.

I met with two groups of partners. Initially, a training on community-based development projects that take into consideration the faith aspects of many who rule communities in Tajikistan, was conducted. When we work with communities in Central Asia and the Middle East, we very frequently encounter a worldview and community to whom questions of faith are a fundamental part of the explanation and solution to their struggle. Our approach is to respect this and build on the resources and energy these traditions can set free.

These partners had experienced this during their COVID 19 relief project in 2021. We looked at lessons learned during this time and how practical help, correct and reliable information on the virus, combined with a willingness to talk about and address fears and spiritual questions people raised, led to deeper relationships in the community, and new hope in the face of the pandemic.

The second group were three local NGOs working for the rights and inclusion of people and children with disabilities in Tajikistan.

Their ability to do advocacy and interacting with state actors has grown enormously over the last few years. Now we are actively tackling financial sustainability. All of them are reaching out to the local community and encouraging local generosity, with remarkable success in some areas. But we also face challenges, such as: why is it that local people prefer to invest in things and give gifts rather than in the ongoing rehabilitation and education work for children? How can salaries for local rehabilitation workers be sustainable? How do we mobilise the local community to become hope bearers with us, and you internationally?

I have known some of these partners for more than 15 years, I have personally journeyed with them, from being people who experienced exclusion and stigma themselves, to becoming advocates and community mobilisers. The hope that they as a team radiate is amazing! I have no doubt that in the right time, the investment in their capacity will create an even larger community of support and hope for them and the people they work with and for.

The work is not without challenges. While we were meeting the smouldering conflict along the Tajik-Kyrgyz boarder erupted in a never known before intensity. While sitting together waiting for peace to prevail, we wonder what our role in rebuilding is, bringing reconciliation and peace-making efforts.

Our local partners have proven repeatedly how well they understand their own community and their capacity to adjust, respond, and bring hope to others around them. We trust that this will be true this time as well.

I could tell other stories: about our partners in Pakistan responding to the floods, our team in Afghanistan feeding under five-year-olds and educating and mobilising women in the community on nutrition topics, about the continued work with Syrian refugees in Northern Iraq and Jordan ... but they will get the spotlight in another report.

For today I thank you for your support that helps us to build the capacity of our local partners in Tajikistan, and elsewhere, so that they can bring hope to their communities.

Yours,

Andrea

Local community rehabilitation worker

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Jun 8, 2022
Growing our community of hope

By Andrea Vogt | International Director Operation Mercy

community mapping in Niger

Dear friends of Operation Mercy,

one of the pages in our newly published annual report starts like this:

"Operation Mercy is a community of hope. We are a community that is diverse in backgrounds, personal stories, skills, and vocations. We are a community working in 10 countries, from many different nations. Our community represents men and women, young and old, many languages, ethnicities, and faith backgrounds. Even though we are different, we are united in wanting to see people raised up, in and through community, because we share hope which enables us to look beyond the pain and suffering that we encounter every day."

... and it is absolutely true!

During the first six months of 2022 we have been looking out to continue to grow our community. I strength and resilience as we continue to work in difficult, challenging places - but also by adding friends and new partners to our community.

In April I was able to spend a week in Niger, a country ranking at the bottom of the human development indix in many areas, dry, hot, forgotten by many. But during this week i met people of hope, who have dreams for their own communities, people who like us want to see restoration and new life in places of barrenness.

The workshop had not only men and women from Niger but also Mali, Chad, Senegal and Mauretania - people full of passion for their own communities.

Talks have started with several of them to see where new partnerships can be build, how lessons we have learned in other fragile hard places can be applied here, what these communities know that can be of value elsewhere in our network. it is an exciting journey - and we hope to be able to share more news about those places with you in the future!

At the same time we continue to build our community of hope bringers, like yourself. We connect to our members during our annual meeting and were able to present our annual report 66 pages of stories and news from our projects. Check out the link below and have a look!!

A special thanks goes as every year to our many international and national volunteers - who put in an astonishing 60 734 hours of professional work in 2022. This means that through our volunteer, self financed staff we can add 2$ to every 4$ you donate!

These 6$ are enough to touch a life and a person in need through our work.

Thanks for being part of our community of hope bringers!

Yours Andrea

community garden

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Feb 8, 2022
with hope and vision into the new year ...

By Andrea Vogt | International Director Operation Mercy

women in Central Asia sharing their stories

Dear friends,

2022 is only six weeks old and already we have seen a few challenges but most of all a lot of hope and vision from our teams and local partners.

A little while ago someone quoted this proverb to me:

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life."

(Proverbs of Salomon)

I think that describes very well what we are experiencing in the middle of much trouble. Two stories for you:

Afghanistan:

For the last 5 months we were in touch with our local staff and partners, many facing fear and anxiety - hope had been crushed and deferred ... their hearts and souls were sick, virtual support can only help with limits.

In January we joined the UN nutrition cluster, got training started, groups of staff meeting together, planning a Nutrition Project for Under 5 year old and breastfeeding mothers. The first of our international manager was able to go and join them for a few weeks and get things going.

The staff and the international team, are starting to dream again. We are starting to see that we are still welcome, yes even invited to make a difference in these horrible times.

If our team was a tree - it certainly was withering over the last months but now it is coming back to life, and we are full of vision and hope to provide life to many children and mothers in the next months.

We are not sure yet if we will fundraise for this project here on GG - but if you want to contribute write us or give to this general project with a note Afghanistan Nutrition Project and we ensure that it will go to the right place!!

Kazakhstan:

The country we considered the most stable of all our project locations started the year with riots, demonstrations, military shooting demonstrators.

The team went into lock down. Once more there was fear and worry what was happening, where would this leave us our women's groups, the anti trafficking work, ...

but only 3 weeks later the groups are meeting again, and in the women's empowerment groups we see a trust and through that hope and life like never before.

Last week a new women walked into the group - after listening to the others for some time, she said i have heard about you and that i can trust you not to judge or gossip. I need to tell someone something I have never told anyone before.

Then she shared a story of abuse she had experienced as a girl. Something that in this "shame and honour" culture was not permitted to happen, or to be confronted. Something for which society blames the girls never the perpetrator.

For the first time in her life, this woman was able to unburden herself, find comfort and listening ears and hearts in this group of women who all have gone through hardship in life. Together they show and build in each other, resilience and hope ... through which they can find life.

I hope you can celebrate these stories with us - and dream with us so that the tree of life might grow in the middle of these communities.

Thanks for partnering with us for hope, capacity and community.

Yours Andrea

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