World Vision Magazine // Blog

Ed note: Jon Warren just returned from Kenya to document the ongoing drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. Here’s a few of the images he saw.

One-year-old Zam Zam’s name means “pure water” in Somali, but he is malnourished. I worry if he’ll live long enough to see the drought’s end. His mother, Layla Mohamed, 23, who fled to Puntland from Mogadishu, Somalia with her husband and five children said, “I don’t sleep enough because I am so worried. I wake up in the night and give drink to the baby.”

Thousands flock to places where there might be food, water, and safety. Isnino Siyat, 22, had to borrow materials to shape some kind of shelter on her second night in Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world, situated outside of Nairobi, Kenya. "We don't have enough food now. The last time we ate was this morning. Our food is finished,” she said. Isnino's husband couldn't help build the shelter. He had to attend the funeral of his 3-year-old nephew Ibrahim Haret who died in the hospital soon after they arrived at Dabaab.

In Dadaab swirling sand and intense heat adds to the misery of the refugees.

Life in the Dadaab refugee camp is difficult for children, especially if they have lost a father like Alihassan Hussein, 13. “We beg people for what we eat since we are newcomers. My mother begs. She borrows food from our neighbors. I only eat once a day,” he said.

Workers dig their third child’s grave of the day in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. This time it was for 3-year-old Ibrahim Harett, who was to weak to survive the 10-day trek to escape the drought in Somalia. He was the nephew of Isnino Siyat.

World Vision’s response includes health screening and nutritional feeding in Puntland, Somalia, on the border with Ethiopia. Two-year-old Mohamed Abdi isn’t happy to be examined, but his mother listens carefully when the doctor explains that he is malnourished and has a fever.

Communities surrounding the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya aren’t neglected either. World Vision is trucking in clean drinking water to some groups and drilling or repairing boreholes in many others.

My colleague Robert Coronado traveled to the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya after I left. He was there to witness a 5,000-tent extension provided by World Vision in partnership with Shelter Box International. Despite the grim circumstances Robert said, “What I realized in photographing the situation at the Dadaab camp was the hope that the people we met have. These refugees know they'll get food and water once they reached the camp. But what really gave them hope for a better tomorrow was knowing that the have a simple structure to call home."

More photos from Jon’s trip to the Horn of Africa.

Photo Journal: Somalia, from worldvisionacts.org

Horn of Africa — Hunger, drought, hope,  from worldvision.org

>>Visit faminenomore.org to learn more about the Horn of Africa famine and support World Vision’s efforts to save the lives of malnourished children.

In Chennai, India, “home” is found in unexpected places.

Families live on the sidewalks of Chennai, India. (Marilee Pierce Dunker/WV)

Have you ever seen a homeless person on the street and wondered where they came from? Where were they born? Where is their family? Most importantly, how did they end up living in a doorway or sleeping under a bridge? On a recent trip to India I had the chance to actually ask that question of a group of homeless people and the answer was both heartbreaking and shocking.

I traveled to India to visit with Rochunga Pudaite, an evangelist from the mountains of Manipur whom my father loved like a son. World Vision helped support Rochunga as a student, and he in turn went on to help thousand of tribal children as he had been helped.

When I left Manipur, I went on to visit several World Vision projects in other parts of India. One of my stops was the city of Chennai, home to India’s largest urban homeless population. For the 40,000 men, women and children who live on its streets, Chennai is an easy place to be born, live and die without anyone ever noticing. As one street-dweller told me, “People pass by us without really seeing us. It is as if we don’t exist.”

But World Vision has seen the need and is effectively changing the world for thousands of Chennai’s invisible poor.

A stretch of sidewalk that a family calls home. (Marilee Pierce Dunker/WV)

I went with Christiana Paranjothy, a World Vision India staff member, to see a program that is offering hundreds of families the opportunity to move off the street and into apartment buildings. Our first stop was to visit families still living on the street, waiting for a chance to be relocated.

“Seventy-one families used to live right here,” Christiana informed me, pointing to a stretch of sidewalk. “Fortunately, we have already moved half of them into small apartments.”

I couldn’t imagine 71 people living on that narrow strip of dirty cement, much less 71 multi-generational families. There just wasn’t room. As my eyes ran down the length of the walk-way, I noticed piles of household belongings neatly stacked against the wall: boxes of pots and pans, clothing, blankets—everything these people owned.

A single stunted tree had broken through the pavement, providing the only spot of green in the landscape of cement. About 30 women and children gathered to sit under its sparse shade to talk with us. One woman kept busy breaking beans into a pot for supper, and I realized that we were sitting in her “kitchen.”

“I’d be interested to hear where you all came from originally,” I asked, addressing the adults, hoping to hear some interesting stories. “Did you come to the city to find work? How did you end up living here?”

My question fell into a sea of blank stares as my audience pondered my question. Finally a voice spoke up. “We were born here. This sidewalk is our home. This is where our parents and grandparents were born … right here … on this sidewalk. This is where we are from.”

Families pull together and care for each other while living on the street. (Marilee Pierce Dunker/WV)

Now it was my turn to ponder as the full meaning of her words sank in. The idea that the filthy, noisy, exposed patch of dirt and cement upon which we sat was the only home any of these people had ever known had not occurred to me.

During my time with World Vision, I have met many who were forced to live in doorways and alleyways…abandoned street children and youth running from abusive situations. I have met men and women made homeless by war or natural disaster, and people sick with AIDS or other diseases that made them outcasts. Others left their home to find a better life and discovered only greater hardship.

Almost everyone I have ever met came from somewhere else. But these people came from here. This was their home.

Instead of walking two miles for water, Sabina now has clean water at home.

Sabina Riwo now has a water spigot at her home (Abby Metty/WV)

On my latest international trip, besides my normal two-week allotment of camera gear, socks, and granola bars, I had also packed a thick stack of World Vision magazines.

I was headed to Marich Pass, a small community in northwest Kenya’s Rift Valley, where World Vision magazine chronicled the story of a woman named Sabina who walked two miles every day, carrying 70 pounds of water for her family. Sabina’s photo graces the cover of our Spring 2011 issue, which focuses on water. Since my team would be visiting the same area, our magazine staff had asked me to take a few copies for the World Vision office there, hoping that they would eventually reach Sabina and her family.

What I didn’t expect was for Moses, the community manager, to tell us that we’d be able to give the magazines to Sabina and meet her face-to-face.

Sabina now smiles because she no longer has to walk two miles carrying 70 pounds of water. (Abby Metty/WV)

Just two weeks prior, Sabina and her neighbor, Christina, had each received water spigots in their backyards, providing clean water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and irrigation. Moses was eager for us to see this for ourselves.

Sabina’s megawatt smile makes her look like a celebrity. She greeted us with a huge grin and sang songs as she filled buckets of water from her new spigot. She and her family were excited to see their story in the magazine and in a video on Moses’ laptop.

The local World Vision staff had brought a case of soda to share, and a dozen kids gathered around just as the sun was setting. The village elders and Sabina’s family drank Cokes under the stars and watched a video in a language they didn’t understand. But Sabina knew the story well—of one small spigot that had turned her whole life around.

That spigot means that her children can go to school. “They won’t be late,” Sabina told me. “They will be clean always.”

That spigot means that her family can have good food, because she has the water and the time to tend a garden. “Water is now near,” Sabina’s husband Jacob said. “We can grow vegetables and maize.”

That spigot means that their animals won’t die of thirst.

And the bonus for a hardworking mom? Sabina said her back doesn’t ache like it used to.

“Thank you very much,” Sabina said. “We are seeing the goodness of this place.”

Sabina (center), and her family and friends see the World Vision magazine featuring her story. (Abby Metty/WV)

Watching the heartbreaking tragedy in Japan while considering sending one of our own.

Rescue workers search for survivors in Minami Sanriku, Japan. (Mitsuko Sobata/WV)

What a heartbreaking week it has been as we’ve watched the unfolding disaster in Japan triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami.

Communications is a leading-edge response for World Vision during an emergency. When Haiti’s quake struck last year, James Addis jumped on a plane that same night. Just a few weeks ago, while James was honing his skills at a crisis-communications training course, reality hit close to home when a strong quake shook New Zealand, where James used to live. But he stayed put as World Vision’s local office handled the response.

Last weekend, I called James to put him on standby for possible deployment to Japan with a communications team. We have not sent him yet, in part because our colleagues at World Vision Japan are on the job. But also, the nuclear threat increased as the week wore on. Crisis-reporting assignments are never without risk—aftershocks, violence, illness, emotional trauma—but nuclear contamination is a whole new element, with altogether different consequences. While it’s never easy to send a colleague into harm’s way, this situation really scares me.

Usually, delaying a communications team from getting to the disaster zone is not the right choice. Given these unique circumstances, it seems the wise choice. Please pray with us for colleagues in Japan covering this historic and heart-wrenching crisis.

See World Vision Japan Humanitarian Emergency Affairs Manager describe the devastation caused by the tsunami.

Getting a crash course in reporting humanitarian emergencies.

World Vision communicators testing satellite phones, James Addis on the right. (Stephen Matthews/WV)

With the dramatic news flowing out of North Africa in recent days, you might well have missed a humanitarian emergency developing in Siamarea. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are pouring into the country, fleeing civil war in neighboring Camada. Government forces in Camada are trying to quell the Anywherian Liberation Front (ALF), which is attempting to establish a radical Islamic state.

The refugees have walked for miles. They are sick, their children are starving, and their women have been sexually abused. Right now, World Vision is establishing relief operations in Siamarea. To complicate matters, the refugees are known to include armed ALF fighters.

Haven’t heard about this? Yeah, I’m pulling your leg. This scenario was part of a training and simulation exercise I’ve just completed in Bangkok, Thailand. With this training, I can now be called away to any disaster zone anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. My task: to communicate the intensity of the crisis in words, pictures, and video for various World Vision publications and websites.

Before entering eastern Siamarea (in reality, a municipality about an hour from downtown Bangkok), myself and the other course participants were up until 1 a.m. putting out press releases and video logs, and establishing a website and social-media channels.

Print is not enough. James Addis rehearsing a video following the Haiti earthquake.

In addition to getting out our message quickly and accurately, we had to be prepared for some serious questions: Will your aid end up supporting ALF fighters and exacerbate the conflict? Does your assistance act as a magnet, drawing more people across the border and creating instability in a second country?

Once in eastern Siamaria, we raced around gathering pictures and stories from a refugee camp, food distribution site, and health clinic. While on the move, we wrote reports, edited footage, and uploaded it all via satellite phone. The scenario was as realistic as possible: Among the distractions was a grilling at a military checkpoint, a high-maintenance celebrity actress, and a barrage of pesky reporters. I gave an interview on camera to the “BBC” at a food distribution. During the interview, the distribution turned into a riot and descended into chaos.

What sustains us in training exercises and real life is the knowledge that when people are better informed about dire human needs, they feel empowered to do something about it. It’s a great job and I feel privileged to play a small part in it—though I hope I won’t have to put the training to use too often.

A Christ statue—one of the world’s largest—reigns over Cochabamba, Bolivia. (Jon Warren/WV)

This month Jon Warren is traveling in Bolivia, South America, with World Vision U.S. President Rich Stearns. His camera has captured stunning views and scenes from high elevations—up to 14,000 feet! These are too good not to share.

La Paz, Bolivia’s administrative capital, has more than a million residents. The city is shaped like a bowl, surrounded by mountains.

Water mirrors sky at this highland community where World Vision helped build a dam.

Greenhouse-grown produce is enough to feed whole families in Tiraque, where World Vision has been working since 1988.

The true beauty of Bolivia—children! Here, girls and boys are registered for sponsorship.

These lovely girls (3-year-old Nathaly, left, and Arcely, 5, with their mother, Asteria) are already sponsored, and they participate in an early stimulation program for children.

See more photos of Rich Stearns’ trip on his Facebook page.

Marceline Philibert and daughter Sabin, 5, among those to benefit from a World Vision transitional shelter. (Jon Warren/WV)

One year after the quake, Haiti is recovering, but the challenges are enormous.

The Seattle Times got its Haiti one-year-later coverage off to an early start last week with a front-page story headlined “Recovery Painfully Slow.”

It’s not difficult to see why. I was back there myself in November, and it’s immediately clear much is still to be done. Take housing. Every patch of open ground is still crowded with tents and makeshift shelters—dotted with children, pit latrines, and water bladders. Some of the bigger camps stretch for miles. More than a million people still live this way.

But perhaps a point that is easily overlooked is that even before the quake housing in Port-au-Prince was a nightmare. The city was infamous for its crowded single-room hovels sited on land vulnerable to flooding, mudslides, or collapse down near-vertical hillsides.

As you can imagine, no humanitarian organization wants to rebuild in such places, fearing it will put people in a worse predicament than they are in already. That means there is a shortage of good land on which to build, and even where there is suitable land it’s often difficult to establish precisely who owns it. Throw into this mix a tropical storm and a major cholera epidemic, and it’s easy to see why recovery in Haiti is hard going.

James Addis on assignment in Haiti. (Jon Warren/WV)

Naturally, this does not mean one throws one’s hands up in horror, but it does mean patience is required. Rome, as they say, was not built in a day. The restored Port-au-Prince will not be built in a day either.

The good news is that where it is possible to build, World Vision is forging ahead with the construction of transitional shelters. These are sturdy dwellings that can withstand wind speeds in excess of 100 mph and are expected to last up to 7 years. My favorite memory of my most recent trip to Haiti is witnessing children and adults moving out of tents and into these new homes. After a year of sleeping rough, their joy knew few boundaries. I will talk about this in a feature I’m writing about Haiti for the Summer issue of World Vision magazine. I’ll also be looking at how World Vision continues to meet the needs of those still living in camps, including the precautions taken to combat cholera, and what the future prospects are. Amid the difficulties, there is much to be encouraged about. Take a look at this film I made with my colleague, videographer Tom Costanza.

A trip to an impoverished home in the Honduran mountains reveals more than just material needs.

Hortensia grinds corn by hand to make tortillas. (Abby Metty/WV)

At the top of a long, slippery, rocky hill is a simple whitewashed house with a beautiful view of the Honduran mountains. I know people who would pay big bucks for a view like that. But Hortensia and her family don’t have big bucks. They barely have money to feed their children—6-year-old Ingrid and 15-month-old Karla.

Hortensia is 21. I have a brother who is 21. I think about when our family dropped Nate off to start college two years ago. He seemed so young—19 and leaving home for the first time. Hortensia would have been pregnant and caring for a 4-year-old at that age.

When I take her hand and greet her with “Buenas tardes,” I think how old she looks. The lines around her eyes and tension in her smile belong to a middle-aged woman. But when she answers me in a high-pitched, girlish voice, I wonder if she is actually 21, or if she could be even younger.

She and her husband share their small bed with both their daughters in the room of a house they do not own. I peek inside their tiny home—an empty bottle of liquor and a stuffed animal are on the floor. Small sacks of corn and beans are under one table.

Hortensia tells me about the history of abuse in her family. She is the second of 10 children. Her mother was an angry woman who beat Hortensia with a machete when she found out her daughter was pregnant at 15. Hortensia and her husband left. Even though they are poor, she tells me it’s “one thousand times better” than being back with her mother.

Hortensia never learned to read or write. Her mother didn’t care to send her children to school. She tells me it’s OK. She believes that if she goes to school and learns to read and write now, as an adult, it might be easier than for Ingrid, who will start kindergarten in February—if they can scrape together enough money.

Hortensia’s husband, Vidal, comes home from picking coffee and offers little by way of greeting her or the children, though they are happy to see him. When I ask them if I can take a family picture, Vidal refuses to put his arm around Hortensia or the girls.

Leaving this mountain community, I am sobered. When hearing stories of need like this one, it’s easy to be thankful for the material things I have—food, a secure home, a great education. But this time my train of thought is different. I think instead of the family and friends at home who love me. I wonder if Hortensia knows that she is loved.

Abby with sponsored children in Honduras.

I’ve been struck this Christmas by the beauty in some of the old carols—tidings of comfort and joy, truth and grace, wonders of his love, Emmanuel has come to thee. These are my prayers for Hortensia—comfort, joy, grace, and knowledge of the love of God for her. Emmanuel is about God drawing near to us, so we can know his heart. My hope is that Hortensia and her family know and experience Emmanuel this year.

Reflections on facing life-threatening situations, with a lesson from a courageous woman in Haiti.

An amputee’s experience in the Haiti earthquake shows her capacity to survive. (Jon Warren/WV)

Sometimes I wonder about my own capacity to survive. It’s not like I’ve actually looked danger in the face or anything, although I have been in some places and situations that were tricky and difficult and well, yes, dangerous.

In preparation for responding to humanitarian emergencies, World Vision sends us to security training. I did mine as part of a larger communications training exercise in Cambodia. One of our field exercises included being stopped by a group of “rebels.” I was singled out because I was the lone American in the group. I was ordered, at gunpoint, to stand against a bamboo fence. Local children poked me with sticks—I don’t think that part was planned. It felt like a scene from “The Deer Hunter.” Although I knew it was an exercise and that I wouldn’t be hurt, it felt real enough to make me anxious. To wonder if, in real life, I could follow the rules of remaining calm, staying dignified, and suppressing the urge to be belligerent. In short, doing what I had to do to survive—even if it went against all my instincts.

Fabiola Tattegrais (right), the quake survivor and recent loan recipient. (Jon Warren/WV)

There’s a movie out now by the director of “Slumdog Millionaire” called “127 Hours.” In it, James Franco portrays Aron Ralston, a biker who falls into a crevasse, gets pinned by a boulder, and has to cut off his own arm with a pocketknife to survive. If that doesn’t make you wonder about your own capacity to survive, nothing will. Ralston was an adventurer. His idea of fun was challenging himself physically in rough and rugged places. I don’t mean to imply that he was asking for it, but if you put yourself in harm’s way often enough, chances are that something will go wrong.

And that includes doing what I do. So we train and we work and we try not to be careless. “Situational awareness,” the security people call it. Avoid putting yourself in places where the potential for trouble is high. So what does this have to do with anything?

In Haiti, where I just returned from and where I’ll be returning to in just over a week, there were many people who found out, completely unwillingly, what capacity they had to survive. Fabiola Tattegrais, 30, was one of those people. Fabiola was trapped beneath the wreckage of a collapsed building during the Jan. 12 earthquake. She called out, begging for help. People responded by telling her to hang on, that help would come. Finally, a man began to dig. He managed to free all but her right foot. With no hope of freeing her foot, they both realized what had to be done, but the man could not bring himself to do it. Fabiola confronted her own capacity to survive. She took his knife, cut off her toes, and was free. Eventually, infection caused the amputation of her leg just below the knee. Now part of World Vision’s disability program, Fabiola received a small loan that will help her start a business—the next step in discovering her capacity to survive.

Tom Costanza in Haiti. (Jon Warren/WV)

So I wonder, how many of us could do the same? God willing, we’ll never know.

Tom Costanza accompanied James Addis and Jon Warren on their recent assignment in Haiti for the Summer magazine. Watch a video Tom’s reflections about his first experience in Haiti after the earthquake.

Ten months after the massive earthquake, James Addis returns to Haiti to find out what’s going on.

A Sunday church service for families still displaced by the quake outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with Demosi Louphine (third from left) leading worship. (Jon Warren/WV)

Almost one year after one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history, Port-au-Prince—and in particular the outlying neighborhood of Petionville, where I’m based—is certainly looking a lot better. The worst of the rubble has been cleared away. Every square inch of the sidewalks seem to be taken up with street vendors selling everything from groceries, to shoes, to cosmetics, to radios, and every other imaginable product. The occasional large, friendly pig roots in the piles of garbage, much as I imagine they have always done.

Children are back at school, and I’m struck by their immaculately clean uniforms, especially their brilliantly white shirts and blouses—quite a feat to maintain given the muddy, trash-filled streets which they must pick their way through. 

The traffic is much the same—it is not moving anywhere fast. People squeeze into brightly colored tap-taps (pickup trucks that function as buses) or risk their lives by hanging onto the vehicles’ sides when they do eventually get moving. 

Perhaps it is my imagination, but the sea of devastated buildings I saw back in January don’t seem quite so devastated. No doubt some have been patched up. Others, of course, are certainly beyond repair—haphazard hunks of twisted concrete and splintered wood.

Sadly, about a million people live in tents and makeshift shelters. World Vision is among the organizations constructing better housing, but the needs are enormous. Difficulties establishing land title are proving a major headache and slowing progress.

Those living in the camps are especially exposed to hurricanes, flooding, and cholera. Cholera is the biggest concern right now. World Vision organizes delivery of 1.2 million liters of water to camps every day and maintains about 650 latrines.

Theo Huitema, World Vision’s water and sanitation manager, has trained community leaders in the camps to check that the water is properly chlorinated to kill harmful bacteria. Chlorine levels have been increased for safety. “People don’t like the taste and smell of the water,” he says—though naturally it’s better than contracting a disease that can kill within hours. Perhaps a bigger threat comes from the pit latrines, which get dirty, fill up fast, and easily get clogged with plastic bags and other trash.

Children at the church service radiate hope. (Jon Warren/WV)

In camps where World Vision is working, every case of diarrhea is treated as a suspected cholera infection. Theo must hastily organize the disinfection of latrines and double-check the quality of the camp water supply. Meanwhile, World Vision’s Child-Friendly Spaces are about to mount a renewed awareness campaign about the importance of hand-washing with soap.

So things are still very difficult, but you don’t have to dig hard to find inspirational stories. This morning, I was at a church held in a large tent in Corail—a displacement camp 10 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, on land set aside by the government to house some of the hundreds of thousands rendered homeless by the quake.

Were people down in the dumps? Not a bit of it. The singing, accompanied by children playing a drum and tambourine, was just about as lively and spirited as I have ever heard. And blow me down, who should be leading the singing but Demosi Louphine, a woman who lost an arm and a leg in the quake, and who I had chatted to the day before in connection with a World Vision program to help quake survivors with disabilities.

At one point, Demosi raised her voice above the impassioned worship and said: “Just as the birds flap their wings to praise the Lord, wave your arms to praise the Lord.” Everybody enthusiastically did so. The excitement in the room went several notches higher. Of course, Demosi could only wave her remaining good arm. The other arm is a short stump. For some reason, seeing her standing at the front of the church waving her one remaining arm—her act of worship to God—moved me very much indeed.

James Addis’ feature about Haiti one year later will appear in the Summer edition of the magazine.