November/December 2005 Living Now
High Gear for Mercy Corps

Hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes … times don't get much busier for international humanitarian aid agencies such as Portland-based Mercy Corps. "We're hitting on all cylinders right now in a way we rarely have," says Nancy Lindborg, Mercy Corps' president. "The tsunami set the stage for some all-hands-on-deck responses, and there's really been no letup since."

Indeed, the Indian Ocean tsunami, 2004's calamitous closing act, prompted one of the agency's most extensive emergency efforts ever. Then, an unfolding food crisis in Niger and civil strife in Uganda created a two-headed emergency on either side of Africa. When Hurricane Katrina shattered the Gulf Coast, Mercy Corps embarked on its first-ever full-scale relief effort within the United States. The agency's Guatemala staff leads international efforts to help areas devastated by floods and mudslides triggered by Hurricane Stan. At almost the same time, the 7.6-magnitude earthquake in northern Pakistan monopolized international headlines.

"I'd say people in the organization are really looking forward to some disaster-free time," Lindborg says. But according to Lindborg and other senior Mercy Corps staff, this extraordinary year has both sharpened the agency's ability to work at top speed and underscored the strengths of its flexible, creative approach. Mercy Corps focuses on both long-term development and short-term relief with programs that currently reach 7 million people in more than 35 countries. In this recent chain of calamities, agency leaders see opportunities as well as crises.

"We used to talk a lot about a continuum," says Neal Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps' CEO. "There was relief, then recovery, then development. We've learned that it's not a continuum, or at least not necessarily a sequential one. You can do relief, recovery and development all at the same time."

Crises Emerge in Africa

Things heated up for Mercy Corps this summer after the agency decided to dive into a pair of what Randy Martin, Mercy Corps' director of global emergency operations, called "slow-onset disasters."

In Uganda, a marauding rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army had forced 1.6 million from their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Sudan's Darfur region. Meanwhile, in Niger, locust swarms and persistent drought put millions at risk of starvation. Mercy Corps dispatched assessment teams to both countries.

Then came Hurricane Katrina, with Stan and the Pakistan earthquake close behind. To Martin, Mercy Corps' ability to respond simultaneously to very different, very complex disasters in Africa, South Asia and the Americas has everything to do with flexibility.

"Other organizations that do this kind of work tend to have bigger dedicated emergency-response teams," says Martin, who leads a team of just four full-time responders. "But basically, we leverage the whole organization. That allows us to punch above our weight, I guess you'd say."

According to Martin, Mercy Corps' on-the-ground response - bolstered by what Lindborg calls the 26-year-old organization's "reservoir of talent" - scales up quickly as cash on hand increases. "When the Pakistan earthquake happened, we were scratching our chins, saying how can we make this work?" Martin says. "So we put in a budget of $20,000. Pretty quickly, we were able to increase that to $50,000. And within a few days, it was up to $1.5 million. There's a real clear connection between donations and what we're able to do on the ground."

Choosing Strategic Interventions

Mercy Corps weaves planning for the future into the very earliest stages of its emergency operations: identifying local leaders and community organizations; establishing cash-for-work programs that pay survivors for their efforts in recovery work; strategizing on underlying, persistent problems.

"In all our work, we look for places that are in transition," Lindborg says. "It's in those moments of change and upheaval that you can move into solutions to some longer-term issues."

Aceh, Indonesia seems to be the example on everyone's mind as the situations in Pakistan, Guatemala, Africa and America's own Gulf Coast unfold. After the tsunami, Mercy Corps' efforts in Aceh transitioned quickly from rapid emergency response to restoring schools, setting up small businesses and providing micro-loans to local entrepreneurs.

"You don't plan for something like a tsunami," says Keny-Guyer. "But in that situation, we knew our added value would come in ways that laid foundations for progress in other areas. And along with that, we try to keep in mind that the people affected are always the best agents of their own recovery."

To Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps' emergency-response successes grow out of that latter conviction - and from an organizational spirit that lends itself to thinking and working fast.

"No matter how successful we are in our work, there will always be disasters in this world, and an immediate need to help the survivors," he says. "It's our job to assemble an organization that can respond quickly, smartly and strategically when those occur, and in ways that reestablish the groundwork for peaceful, productive communities."

For more information, or to support Mercy Corps’ relief efforts, go to www.mercycorps.org.