Upcomming Events•
on June 9th, 2010•
A crowd gathers while a shipment of emergency food and supplies is unloaded.
While our Guatemala team is traveling through communities that have yet to see relief efforts, our New Haven office has been tracking news, efforts, and spreading the word on a cause that seems to have fallen under the radar with so many news sources and aid organizations. Everyone here at Mercado Global has been working together to get aid quickly into Guatemala’s Highlands, whether our job titles include the words “Production”, “Operations”, “Development” or “Executive”. By the end of the day today, we will have provided six weeks emergency food and supplies to the families in our partner communities that need it and partnered with www.aidg.org to bring their engineering team into the communities where we work to fix the water systems.
While this is an excellent start, it is just that: only a start. For the families with no food for their children, no roof over their head, and only memories of their friends and relatives, the effects of Tropical Storm Agatha will not be forgotten in a few weeks or even months. It is important to recognize the severity of the long term issues that arose as a result of the current storm.
Hundreds of families living in the Highlands have lost their homes and possessions in landslides. Thousands more have lost all their belongings and food supplies in the flooding. Displaced families will need food and shelter. And millions will need longterm food aid or an alternate income stream now that their crops have been lost.
Tropical Storm Agatha has destroyed many homes, and has damaged valuable crops and water supplies.
Possibly the most devastating aspect of Tropical Storm Agatha is that the entire food and coffee crop in the Highlands has been destroyed. That means that while we grapple with the threat of cholera (from the many destroyed water systems) and hunger among the displaced now, a major famine is on the horizon in the region when there is no crop to harvest and no coffee crop to bring in a few months from now. After the devastation that occurred last week, major outside assistance is needed to ensure families have income and enough to eat in the coming months.
I urge everyone who is reading this to share the situation in San Antonio, Chaquijaya, and the communities of the Highlands with your friends and loved ones. While unfortunately this is not the only natural disaster in the media, it is not one to be forgotten. If you would like to donate to Mercado Global’s relief fund please click here. You may also donate by sending a check to the below address:
Mercado Global
Attn: Agatha Relief Fund
20 Mitchell Dr.
New Haven, CT 06511
We are extremely thankful to everyone who has already contributed to this effort. It is only with your donations that we are able to provide a meaningful impact to the families in our partner communities.
To see more photos of the situation in the Highlands from the Mercado Global team, visit our facebook page by clicking here.
Updates•
on June 5th, 2010•
San Antonio Palopo community members look for bodies in the wreckage of a mudslide.
A strong and destructive tropical storm hit Guatemala this past weekend. Rather than recount the horror it wrought, I refer you this link, which provides a sense of the stress this country has faced over the past few days. The pictures featured in the article are all from within 25 minutes of Guatemala City. There has been very little coverage of the damage to the highland communities in which we work. This region has been hit even harder than the capital.
The sun finally came out on Tuesday and we immediately began efforts to bring relief to our partner communities in Guatemala that suffered the most from the fury of Tropical Storm Agatha. In the U.S. we started raising the funds needed to purchase and distribute relief items, and in Guatemala we began contacting our community partners to assess the needs and plan distribution. This is the first natural disaster I’ve experienced in Guatemala, and I was shocked and frustrated to witness such a lack of infrastructure in this country to deal with events such as these. However, I have also now seen that the most effective mechanism this country has to recover from this level of destruction is not the government, but the goodwill of individuals and community groups who are moved to selfless acts.
San Antonio community groups and Mercado Global Guatemala staff working together to organize the 2,500 pounds of relief items for displaced families.
The immediate response from supporters in the U.S. enabled us to make our first impact in San Antonio, one of the two Lake Atitlan communities that suffered the most severe damage. On Tuesday we contacted the leader of MG’s partner cooperative in San Antonio who came to our office accompanied by the town’s school director, Tru, to discuss what the town needs and how we can help. Our Guatemala operations manager, Lidia, and our Executive Director, Ruth, worked as a team with the local leaders and decided we would deliver bags containing three weeks worth of basic necessities to the 57 families that had lost nearly everything, including many family members. The next day, our team of six in Panajachel met with the San Antonio cooperative and school committee, and together we distributed hundreds of pounds of basic necessities to the displaced families. Everyone carried the heavy bags of food up the mountain into the heart of the town, where the families were temporarily camped out with relatives and in municipal buildings.
Mercado Global’s model is successful because of the strong partnerships we have in both the U.S. and Guatemala, and because we are able to connect our partners and work together to have meaningful impacts. Our relief efforts worked the same way.
Panajachel team and San Antonio team in assembly line loading the goods onto a boat to take across Lake Atitlan to San Antonio.
Our Guatemala staff was able to work with dependable and trustworthy leaders in the communities to assess the needs and plan a quick and efficient distribution process. We were able to bring food in quickly and get it into the hands of those who needed it the most because Mercado Global works directly with community organizations throughout the highlands, including cooperatives and local school committees. We already have the perfect distribution network and relationships with community leaders we know we can trust – all we needed were the funds, and our supporters in the U.S. quickly responded to that need. San Antonio community members were able to guide us in ensuring funds from the U.S. were used to save lives and begin the rebuilding process within its own community. We are so grateful to everyone, both in the U.S. and Guatemala, for helping us bring hope to the community of San Antonio.
A mother and her child in San Antonio receive a bag of relief items. This was the first food shipment to reach this town after the storm.
MG Operations Manager, Lidia, giving three weeks worth of food and other much needed items to a mother who lost nearly everything in the storm.
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