crs Archives - Jake Lyell

Post Tagged with: "crs"

Feed the Future Nigeria

August 21, 2016

There’s no magic bullet when it comes to poverty alleviation, especially when working with communities for whom living off the land is their sole form of sustenance. Problems here in northwestern Nigeria are complex, and the diverse challenges create a devastating domino effect by which families are often overwhelmed. Poor agricultural production leads to malnutrition and to communities that lack income. Desertification and the expanding Sahel lead to fewer water sources and make it more difficult for communities to observe proper sanitation and hygiene practices. These factors impact everything from livelihood, to health, to education, and form the boundary between mere survival and success. Only a holistic, multi-pronged approach can address the myriad of obstacles faced here. Feed the Future Nigeria Livelihoods Project is funded by USAID and is being implemented over a period of five years by Catholic Relief Services in some of the country’s most vulnerable households. As the project enters its fourth year, staff and stakeholders are lobbying the Nigerian government to uptake and implement[…]

Ghana’s haute couture handbags

June 3, 2016

The straw basket and handbag makers of northern Ghana are drawing a lot of attention lately– enough, in fact, that two of my clients have each sent me to the region on separate occasions in recent months to get a close up glimpse of these fashionable totes. The groups that make them have banded together in cooperatives in order to buy supplies in bulk and save and lend amongst each other. Some groups have even managed to find financial backing and gain certified Fair Trade status, which would explain why Shared Interest, a fair trade investment firm, sent me there to capture these entrepreneurs at work. The colorful hand bags and baskets are crafted by groups of women using straw that is first rolled and split with their teeth, then dyed in vibrant colors before being woven into intricate patterns by hand. It’s a tradition that’s long been passed down through the[…]

Accessing Remote Nepal

September 2, 2015

Go behind the scenes in an emergency response with Catholic Relief Services. The organization is using a variety of resourceful and inventive ways to access some of Nepal’s most remote communities affected by the earthquakes that struck earlier this year.

Cash is King

July 17, 2015

Catholic Relief Services uses dynamic and creative approaches for its on-the-ground emergency relief efforts. Find out why cash distributions are the best solution for some families in the wake of the destructive Nepal earthquakes.

This App Saves Lives

March 23, 2015

“You need a medium to tell people. When I show pictures and video, a client understands the information so much better. Mere verbal information does not have credibility and authority.” These words are not lifted from one of my recent sales pitches to potential clients. Rather, they were said by a community health worker named Sunita in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. Sunita now uses a phone app to facilitate her work from house to house among pregnant and nursing women. Uttar Pradesh currently has some of the worst maternal and newborn mortality rates in all of India. When the government launched their ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) program in 2005, the goal was to place one such community health worker in every village in the country in order to reduce maternal and newborn deaths associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Today, with nearly 900,000 ASHAs, India has more[…]

Water by the People

October 13, 2014

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll quit as soon as the net you’ve given him breaks. It’s not uncommon when driving across rural Africa to see a hand-pump well that has not been used for some time; not because the water supply has been exhausted below, but because a proper system was not put in place for the construction and maintenance of that well. A well is an expensive thing to build, but it becomes even costlier when a community ceases to receive benefit from it. In remote Bukwo, Uganda, most people still draw their water from unclean and unprotected sources like rivers and streams. Because proper hygiene and sanitation practices are not widely followed, the people that use this water are exposed to diseases like diarrhea and typhoid. “It used to take me two hours to go[…]

Leave it to the Experts: Innovative HIV Programs in Malawi

June 30, 2014

We’ve reached a global hinge point in the treatment of HIV. People living with the disease are no longer passive beneficiaries. After more than a decade of receiving health and nutrition training, HIV+ people are often times living healthier lifestyles than many of their negative peers. Catholic Relief Services‘ Expert Client program places trained HIV+ community members in local health facilities where they guide new patients through the rigors of anti-retroviral treatment (ARV). By using their own experience of living with the disease to counsel and mentor, they empower the new patients to live more healthy and productive lives. I recently shot and produced this video for CRS in southern Malawi. The program is funded by USAID.

Catching Up | Summer, 2014

June 4, 2014

See what’s been happening lately in my work and life. Special thanks to Andrew Ladson from MCC for the photos of me from Namibia, and to Lauren Matthews for the wedding video.

In Gertrude’s STEPS – Catholic Relief Services work with OVCs in Zambia

October 12, 2011

It can be said that young people have suffered the most from the effects of HIV in Africa. The disease took a devastating toll on the population of Zambia, wiping out nearly a generation of the most economically active and productive members of society, those 20 to 40 years old. But it is the young who are left behind, often to fend for themselves and cope with a disease that is to be their only inheritance. With an HIV prevalence rate of 20%, Mongu District in western Zambia is one of the areas hardest hit by HIV in the country. Below, Nurse Idah Jangazya collects blood samples during a monthly HIV screening clinic at Mindolo Clinic in Kitwe, Zambia. Gertrude Nyambe is a 41 year-old mother of five living in Mongu. At the age of 35 she and her husband were diagnosed with HIV. He succumbed to the disease soon[…]