Several members of Development and Peace are currently on a solidarity tour of Ethiopia to visit with local organizations supported by Development and Peace. Over the next few days, they will be writing about their visits and experiences. Here is their first message!
By Guy Des Aulniers, Emergencies Program Officer for the Middle East
It’s Monday morning in Erbil. It’s 6 a.m. and the sun still hasn’t come up. Santa Lucia Church is situated just across from the hotel where I’m staying. From my window, I can count about 40 tents, placed closely together, one glued to the other. In each tent, there are partitions which separate the three families that live there (each family consists of about 8 people), the rooms and the kitchens. Although there is heating, the ground is only covered with a burlap rug.
After a long flight from Canada, our Development and Peace delegation arrived in Manila around midnight, Saturday, August 15, 2014. We were tired but excited to begin our visit with our partners in the Philippines, particularly those responding to Typhoon Haiyan. It was such a pleasure to meet the other members of the delegation that I would be travelling with over the next 10 days. I was so impressed with the commitment of everyone in the group, all giving of their time to share in this visit.
The fierceness of Typhoon Haiyan can be easily seen from the road that winds along the coast of Eastern Samar (Philippines). Every few hundred metres, out of the billowing coconut trees, another town of ramshackle houses appears, the tarps that serve as roofs flapping in the wind. With so much devastation around, it is easy to lose sight of what is beyond the palm trees.
Arthur Peters, Executive Director, ShareLife Toronto
Arthur Peters is the Executive Director of ShareLife of the Archdiocese of Toronto. He is part of a delegation visiting Development and Peace projects in response to Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in the Philippines.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve thought alot about the people who were on the Malaysian airliner that was shot down last month. The passengers were likely eating a meal, watching a movie, or speaking with one another, and in an instant it was all over.
It’s been nine months since Typhoon Haiyan (known locally as Yolanda) barrelled through the Philippines, yet evidence of its gale force winds and crushing waves are still very visible all around the city of Tacloban, one of the worst-hit areas. Although debris has been cleared from the roads, at times it feels as if it has simply been pushed to the side. Gnarled metal reaches out towards the sky, surrounded by collapsed walls. Nearly every structure has some part of it that is bent, shattered, twisted or simply missing.
Fran Lucas, Second Vice-President of the Catholic Women’s League
Fran Lucas, of the Catholic Women’s League, is a member of the Development and Peace delegation visiting Typhoon Haiyan-affected communities in the Philippines.
Gabrielle Angers-Gosselin, Quebec Without Borders intern
Following our first blog post, we felt that it would be a good idea to provide more details about the women’s centres that we work with on a daily basis. As you already know, our internship with CEPROSI has led us to work with women from the Max Paredes and Cotahuma boroughs of the city of La Paz and the Ciudad Satelite district of the city of El Alto. These are the target populations of CEPROSI, and to reach them, they are working with the Sembrando Semillas women’s association, which has more than 300 women in over 20 centres.
Here we are at the finishing line! We’ve made it to the last week of work. Only the final details are left: thinking about our goodbye party; finishing our internship project; purchasing souvenirs; … and writing up a few blog posts to tell you about our experience here in Bolivia! We believe that it’s important to describe the daily life we’ve shared over these last two and a half months.
