By David | life is short, try
Hard to believe we're heading into our third month of crisis response. And while others have burned out or left to chase adrenaline at the next disaster, or reached the limit of their capacity or creativity, we're still going strong, evolving our processes along the way.
We didn't set out to work in the humanitarian sector, putting out fires, but we recognized from the first day we were in a particular time and place, with the people, skills and experience to do something relevant. The tricky part will be transitioning back to developmental work with a medium to long term focus.
So last week we packed and delivered 12 tons of food boxes for thousands of families. And starting a month ago, we’re offer separate bags for kids, containing dried and fresh fruit, healthy crackers, a toy, coloring pencils and a book.
Not only do refugees and their host families benefit, but over 90% of our contents are Made in Moldova, stimulating the local economy. Recently we started including whole grain bread, which is a big hit, next week sunflower oil, and the week after that, fresh cucumbers and spring onions. Once the growing season picks up, over half the bag weight will be fresh produce, bought from Eco-village farmers, at fair prices.
We believe it's import to vary the bag contents, based on informal surveys, because we're client oriented. Sure, we could just buy the same thing, save ourselves time and money, and reduce packing complexity. But we're not approaching this with a bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all mindset, serving a captive audience. What we offer refugees is what we serve our own families.
Continuing on that topic, last week a consultant from a major humanitarian organization visited one of our distributions. She shared a story about working in Bangladesh, where they had been receiving the exact same food for 6 months, and how they begged for variety, even offering to exchange the entire box for just a few eggs.
There's an expression in charity circles, that it's easy to donate a dollar, but to do it right costs a dollar.
And there’s another expression that charity is a business.
Yesterday we had a disappointing experience with an organization that must consider us a competitor. They distribute less than one third the volume we do, but have a PR “footprint” at least three times ours. Although these days, not sure exactly what they’re doing, their social media posts seem few and far between. Anyway, they sent someone from their team to complain out loud during our event about an expired product, but when we showed him he was confusing the production date with the expiration date, he quickly disappeared.
We’re coming up on 100 tons of food, handed directly to tens of thousands of people, with a waitlist four thousand long and growing every day. I’d assume if we were doing something strange, we wouldn’t be so darn popular…
Links:
By David | a guy who thinks about crackers too much
By David | just a guy who likes to fix stuff
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