Panagiotis
gcpetrop79
martsolka
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s been a while since I wrote here. In the last few months, I’ve moved with my organization, Action Against Hunger (ACF) to Pakistan. I’ve been asked to write a few blog entries for the Financial Times seasonal appeal for Action Against Hunger (www.ftagainsthunger.org). Below is the last entry, before editing (which the newspaper will do) which I felt pretty much summed up a lot of things that have been on my mind recently and wanted to share personally before the FT editing filter. I hope you enjoy it. Happy new year and may 2011 be a little bit less fucked up than 2010 was.
Action Against Hunger is an organization whose sole focus is eliminating hunger by treating malnutrition where it finds it, and preventing hunger where it can. It’s a tall order and in order to do this it takes time, energy and commitment. It is not a myopic or impossible vision and it does not exist in a vacuum. Hunger is not just lack of food, it is everything. Hunger is war, Hunger is climate change, Hunger is helplessness, and disability, and the wrong color and sometimes the wrong gender or mental state. Its root causes are legion; its force awesome. Therefore, to say that only a nutritional treatment center will solve hunger is not a complete statement, but coupled with the humanitarian ideal of helping those in need, it is then placed in better context. And if it is backed up by recovery and development interventions related to climate shock reduction, capacity building of the government health systems and risk reduction of communities, using thoughtful working methodologies which embrace and approach those who are unable or not allowed to meet you half-way, then, you eliminate Hunger.
This is how we work. This is how we should work. This is what we believe and what we promote to our partners, our donors and our supporters. To you out there, and to our colleagues who we meet every month, every year, in every mission. And who are increasingly being hurt, kidnapped, mistreated and whose name and profession are taken advantage of and co-opted in the name of politics or a bottom line, while attempting to live up our ethos and ideals.
Action Against Hunger is not the only organization working to combat hunger and malnutrition in the world. Some argue that front-line, emergency interventions do not have enough ‘impact’ in the bigger picture. I am not sure what the ‘bigger picture’ is, in the same way that political scientists cannot agree on where negative peace ends and positive peace starts.
Aid workers are plagued by frequent existential and ethical questions. Am I in the right place? Am I doing the right thing? Should I be doing it with another organization or in a different context? Why don’t the people I help welcome me more warmly? What does my family think about me? There’s no permanent answer to these questions. Only recurring salves in the form of a saved child, a safe family with food in their home, or a community no longer at the mercy of water-borne disease or the predations of drought, disease and weak health systems. They are fleeting and short-lived as we move through our work. But at least for me, they serve as a consistent reminder: I am in the right place. I am doing the right thing.
