Geneviève Talbot, Program Officer for Emergency Relief
I have arrived in Burkina. It was more or less of a chaotic arrival! I was meant to fly to Bamako, Mali, to later travel to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, but the situation being what it is, the flight to Bamako was cancelled and I landed directly in Ouaga. Fortunately, our partner OCADES knew what to do and I found myself in good hands!
The Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI) is hosting a Forum on Haiti on May 9th and 10th to discuss the work of the various organizations from Quebec and Canada that are working on post-earthquake reconstruction and development projects in Haiti. The AQOCI is bringing these actors together to dialogue on lessons learned from the field, and to ensure that Haitians are the ones guiding the process.
Guy Des Aulniers, Program Officer for Emergency Relief
I am writing my last blog post from home in Montreal. With the airport in Bamako closed, I was driven by our friends at Caritas Mali to neighbouring Burkina Faso (14 hours) so that I could fly back to Montreal from Ougadougou.
Guy Des Aulniers, Program Officer for Emergency Relief
Monday 4 p.m. and the first shots are heard. In these circumstances, we always ask ourselves if this noise is simply a car engine exploding. But after the 10th detonation in 15 minutes, we no longer ask ourselves this question. For a moment, there is a lull, but the shots begin again around 7 p.m. I was at a restaurant with Gaston Goro, Emergencies Coordinator with Caritas Mali. We were meant to go pick up Ary from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB), who was arriving that night, but his flight was delayed by a sand storm that hit Bamako.
Guy Des Aulniers, Program Officer for Emergency Relief
I spent my first day in Bamako with Gaston Goro, the Emergencies Coordinator at Caritas Mali, and Mamadou Diakité, an accountant with the organization. Caritas Mali was the first Caritas in the region to launch an appeal for aid to go towards the current food crisis here, but the response of the Caritas network – and the international community - has been slow.
Guy Des Aulniers, Program Officer for Emergency Relief
It seems like just yesterday that I was 20 years old and a law student at the University of Laval in Québec. I had just been selected by Canadian Crossroads International to go to Africa – Mali to be precise. I was leaving North America for the first time. In fact, it was the first time that I was travelling by plane! Was I excited? I can still remember singing with the nuns next to me on the Alitalia flight! They were on their way to visit Rome, which for me was just stopover on my way to Bamako.
Since this past January, over 200,000 people have fled their homes in Mali, mainly due to rebel offenses in the north of the country. Of this number, 107,000 have taken refuge in other parts of the country, while the rest have fled to neighbouring Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Algeria.
It’s been just over a year since Japan experienced one of the worst natural disasters in its history. An earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter Scale triggered a massive tsunami with waves exceeding 10 metres that devastated the north-eastern coast of the country, and creating estimated 28 million tonnes of debris.
Canadians showed tremendous solidarity and generosity towards the people of Japan and donated $1.2 million to Development and Peace for relief efforts.
Guy Des Aulniers, Emergency Relief program officer at Development and Peace, was interviewed by Geoffrey P. Johnston from the online news magazine Christian Week for an article on the Christian response to the humanitarian crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa.
Suzanne Slobodian, Fundraising Officer, Major gifts
The Filipino community is very active and a source of inspiration…
It was with these words that Michael Casey, Executive Director of Development and Peace, opened a meeting yesterday with two representatives of the Federation of Filipino-Canadian Associations of Quebec (FFCA).