Concern Blogs

By Mustafa Kamal, Overseas Account Manager, Concern Worldwide

Bangladesh recently celebrated two significant 40^th anniversaries. As a Bangladeshi and a member of Concern Worldwide for the past 20 years, the events have a dual-significance.  In addition to marking the independence of my country, it also was the anniversary of Concern’s first mission to support vulnerable and under-served Bangladeshi refugees in Calcutta, India following the liberation war. The response in Calcutta was Concern’s second mission as an organization and led to what is now four decades of high-impact quality programming inside Bangladesh.

This month, Concern is recognizing its 40^th year in Bangladesh with events in Dhaka and our headquarters in Dublin. While much work remains to be done in Bangladesh, what we have accomplished since that first mission to support Bangladeshi refugees in 1971 is remarkable. In many ways, our work in Bangladesh has shaped Concern’s programming and how we bridge emergency response and development, and I am honored and very proud to have been a part of it, both on-the-ground in Dhaka and now in Dublin, Ireland.

My first interaction with Concern was in 1989.  I was a chartered accountant student in Dhaka and had the opportunity to be a part of consultancy project to review Concern’s financial systems. As part of this assignment, I traveled to Saidpur to review the financial systems of Concern’s programs. Read the rest of this entry »

By Nicki Sugrue

Jean Kwizerimana, 15, is a sixth-year student at Rugendo Primary School in Burundi who received a school uniform and supplies from Concern Worldwide.

September is the beginning of the school year in Burundi, but for many children it is just like any other month. Twelve years of civil conflict, which ended in 2005, left the country scarred. Reconstruction has been slow, significantly impacting the quality of education and the standard of schools available. Many families do not have the means to send their children to school and, even when they do attend, there is a high drop-out rate due to large class sizes and a lack of school materials and infrastructure. Read the rest of this entry »

Patients at Wesleyan Hospital on the island of La Gonâve lie on outdoor beds, both by choice and because of overcrowding. Photo: Ed Kenney, Concern Worldwide.

There are thousands of families who have fled the mainland to the small island La Gonâve, just 20 kilometers off Haiti’s northwestern coast, and their numbers are growing.  In a place where the supply of food and clean water for the normal population is uncertain at the best of times, and where the hurricane season is four short months away, the challenge for organizations like Concern is immediate and massive. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeaninie Mascelin and son Valner Valbuen at Wesleyan Hospital, La Gonave.

We visited Wesleyan Hospital, largest on the island, and La Gonâve’s dilemma was brought home in one family’s story.  We saw a very thin older woman lying motionless, expressionless on a bed in the middle of the hospital courtyard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Currently, Chad is hosting some 268,000 Sudanese and 74,000 CAR refugees and attacks by armed militias and rebels, inter-ethnic violence and tensions over land access have led to the internal displacement of more than 170,000 Chadians.

Aid agencies are trying to provide assistance to as many people as possible according to key humanitarian principles, such as impartiality, independence and neutrality.

But access to the affected populations can be very difficult and even dangerous for humanitarian workers. Just recently two humanitarian workers were kidnapped in the border town of Adé and so far only one has been released. Last year, the head of an international NGO was shot dead while travelling in eastern Chad. Read the rest of this entry »

Concern’s Afghanistan program focuses on the areas of agriculture and environmental protection, water and environmental health. It is a combination of humanitarian and development projects.

In the first six months of 2009 over 1,000 civilians had been killed through conflict in Afghanistan. This is a 24 percent increase in the rate from last year. Through the line of work five humanitarian aid workers were murdered and five were seriously injured. This is the context in which we operate. Read the rest of this entry »

As World Humanitarian Day approaches, I have just returned from a five-day visit to Masisi, in North Kivu Province – part of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that’s been hardest hit by conflict over recent decades.

Tens of thousands of people, who have been displaced numerous times by warring national and regional groups, are eeking out a living on what should be fertile soil. Many are not so lucky. There are more than 200,000 internally displaced in Masisi. Some 10,000 of them are living in camps in the Masisi town center. Read the rest of this entry »