Yolanda Barberá oversees the International Rescue Committee’s community-based child healthcare programs in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Uganda. Yolanda, a native of Spain, has worked in healthcare for over 14 years in Africa in Asia.
One of the most familiar and devastating diseases in the countries where the IRC works is also one of the most preventable and treatable: malaria.
Jen Steele is the International Rescue Committee’s education programme officer. She is based in New York.
My IRC colleagues and I know that children affected by crisis, whether war or natural disaster, need help restoring a sense of normalcy and safety in their lives. One of the best ways to do this is to reintroduce the familiar routine of school, where teachers can work with them over time to recover. Toward this goal, the IRC partners with schools in crisis zones to create “Healing Classrooms.”
NORTH KIVU, Democratic Republic of Congo - Photographer Aubrey Wade met primary school teacher Uwizera Desange when he was documenting the International Rescue Committee’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been engulfed by conflict for more than a decade. The IRC is working in Congo to save lives, revive communities and help ensure that more children can go to school — even during a crisis. We have trained thousands of teachers and enabled almost 500,000 children to access basic education in safe classrooms.
Until all efforts to trace relatives or identify local caregivers have been exhausted, separated Haitian children must not be put up for adoption, says the International Rescue Committee, a leading aid organisation reuniting families in Haiti. "Every week, IRC case workers are tracing missing relatives and reuniting families and every week they meet more parents desperately searching for their children," says Jennifer Morgan, who runs the International Rescue Committee's family tracing program in Haiti.
Kinshasa With only five years to go, the Democratic Republic of Congo is far from reaching the Millennium Development Goal of primary education for all by 2015. Nearly half of Congolese children (more than 3 million) are estimated to be out of school and one in three have never stepped into a classroom (1). Universal primary education is one of the key Millennium Development Goals and identified as a priority by the Congolese government, yet funding for education programmes remains extremely limited.
Nearly a month after heavy violence and destruction in the Georgia region displaced some 160,000 civilians, tens of thousands remain crammed into temporary shelters and many lack the most basic services. More than 1,500 displaced people, mostly ethnic Georgians from Russian-occupied areas, packed a tent camp in Gori that was established for 1,000 individuals only a week ago. The International Rescue Committee rapidly constructed 50 latrines, 25 showers and a dozen water points at the camp to ensure families there have clean drinking water and adequate washing and sanitation facilities.
