Together We Stand

[ 15 ] Image: Red een Kind Women of a self-help group in Rutovu Commune, Burundi and Karen ethnic leaders) participated in the training series in disaster management and leadership. Representatives from each group attended the training and were able to share the knowl- edge they gained with their communities and take ownership for promoting resilience. Hungarian Baptist Aid and Myanmar Baptist Convention provided academic-level trainers, while the Hungarian Foreign Ministry offered co-sponsorship. The training equipped the leaders to better protect their people and manage disasters. It comprised 35 theoretical and practical lectures, case studies and hands-on exercises, designed after consultations with local experts. It included topics such as early warning systems, human rights and humanitarian law, refugee and IDP camp management, and humanitarian standards and democratic transitions. Local trainers shared the knowledge they gathered responding to cyclone Nargis and other disasters. A leaders’ network was formed to provide peer support in difficult times. Today Ja Seng Pu is a leader instead of a victim. The knowl- edge she gained from the training empowers her to work with Kachin IDPs, and to respond effectively to natural disasters such as the Moekaung flood in July 2015. Ja Seng Pu now works to alleviate the suffering of victims and boost the resil- ience of her local community. Training is also one way in which Mission East works to increase the resilience of women in rural communities in Afghanistan. The remoteness of north-eastern Afghanistanmeans that humanitarian and development programming does not suffi- ciently reach the most vulnerable, especially the extremely poor rural communities that are farthest from roads, markets and basic services. In this region 47 per cent of children under five are moderately or severely stunted and improvements in food secu- rity and livelihoods are desperately needed. Mission East Afghanistan is working to develop a context- specific resilience score or index. This will use various indicators to help measure the impact of interventions on increasing the resilience of a community or household, and determine when a community has become more self-reliant and less vulnerable to future crises and shocks. Improvements in resilience will come through target- ing the most vulnerable. Mission East’s programme design involves selecting the most vulnerable communities and utilizing local knowledge to identify beneficiaries who are the most vulnerable people within these communities. This results in women being chosen as beneficiaries because few women own resources such as land and livestock, and they have fewer livelihood options than men. Very few activities are considered socioculturally appropriate for women, and few of these are sufficient to support a family. Mission East has worked with women’s self-help groups (SHGs) for many years in Afghanistan and is strengthening their role in the empowerment of women and the advancement of rights-based approaches. SHGs represent a non-threaten- ing and culturally sensitive mechanism for mobilizing local resources, building self-reliance, facilitating social cohesion T ogether W e S tand