"Vietnam". That's the response most people give me when I ask them where they see hope in the world. Predictably, no one mentions anywhere in the Middle East.
Nearly a year has passed by since I arrived in Kuwait and started working on the Iraq programme. For the past few months, asking people this question has become a preoccupation for me. In my mind, hope comes from believing you can effect change. Sadly Iraq leaves you feeling powerless.
It's perhaps strange that I should feel this way. We operate in an area of relative security and stability and we've achieved a lot over the past year: we've provided hundreds of returnees with legal assistance to get children family protection, legal status, food rations and school registration; we've restored livelihoods for hundreds of families returning to the marshes; we've built bridges and levelled roads so children can get to school; we've built the capacities of local organisations; we've built drop in centres for street children; we've lobbied, with mixed success, for the Iraqi constitution to reflect the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and we've implemented a range of child protection projects. This is all overwhelmingly positive. We make a difference. It matters that we're here. We would be missed.
But sight of this impact gets blurred. While you're busy with the day to day nitty gritty of implementation, you're bombarded by the reports of unrelenting and ever worsening bombings, shootings, kidnapping, corruption and exploitation, and failed attempts to secure peace. This is what sticks in your mind until those periodic opportunities to step back and reflect. Especially when you're stuck in another world and detached from the beneficiaries.
Every day our Administrator compiles a news update on Iraq and the fields we work in so we're all up to date with developments. Sadly, it was so depressing some staff would discard it without even a glance - it was too much. So recently she was set a challenge: to compile a news update of stories of hope. She failed. Humour was as close as we got to hope.
So, this week I've recruited an Iraqi journalist and photographer to find these stories. To search for the hope in people's lives and document it.
It does exist. The people who are working for organisations like ours while their friends and families flee for safe refuge in the rural areas or outside Iraq. The woman who broke the silence and cultural acceptance of early and forced marriage in her village by opening up and sharing her long kept secrets about her own early and forced marriage and it's impact on her. The poverty stricken villagers who collected enough money to rent a building to function as a school for their children because the Department of Education couldn't build them one until 2007. The women who used livelihood grants to set up as hairdressers and beauticians. This is all hope. It's just it rarely gets reported.
Nearly a year has passed by since I arrived in Kuwait and started working on the Iraq programme. For the past few months, asking people this question has become a preoccupation for me. In my mind, hope comes from believing you can effect change. Sadly Iraq leaves you feeling powerless.
It's perhaps strange that I should feel this way. We operate in an area of relative security and stability and we've achieved a lot over the past year: we've provided hundreds of returnees with legal assistance to get children family protection, legal status, food rations and school registration; we've restored livelihoods for hundreds of families returning to the marshes; we've built bridges and levelled roads so children can get to school; we've built the capacities of local organisations; we've built drop in centres for street children; we've lobbied, with mixed success, for the Iraqi constitution to reflect the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and we've implemented a range of child protection projects. This is all overwhelmingly positive. We make a difference. It matters that we're here. We would be missed.
But sight of this impact gets blurred. While you're busy with the day to day nitty gritty of implementation, you're bombarded by the reports of unrelenting and ever worsening bombings, shootings, kidnapping, corruption and exploitation, and failed attempts to secure peace. This is what sticks in your mind until those periodic opportunities to step back and reflect. Especially when you're stuck in another world and detached from the beneficiaries.
Every day our Administrator compiles a news update on Iraq and the fields we work in so we're all up to date with developments. Sadly, it was so depressing some staff would discard it without even a glance - it was too much. So recently she was set a challenge: to compile a news update of stories of hope. She failed. Humour was as close as we got to hope.
So, this week I've recruited an Iraqi journalist and photographer to find these stories. To search for the hope in people's lives and document it.
It does exist. The people who are working for organisations like ours while their friends and families flee for safe refuge in the rural areas or outside Iraq. The woman who broke the silence and cultural acceptance of early and forced marriage in her village by opening up and sharing her long kept secrets about her own early and forced marriage and it's impact on her. The poverty stricken villagers who collected enough money to rent a building to function as a school for their children because the Department of Education couldn't build them one until 2007. The women who used livelihood grants to set up as hairdressers and beauticians. This is all hope. It's just it rarely gets reported.
No comments:
Post a Comment