International Relief & Development (NGOs)

News:A Naguru estates resident returns home from the market. Kampala City Council has given residents of Naguru estate six months to move so that the 60 year-old collonial era development can be razed for other development. Residents are upset and worried about where they would move to which would be as affordable.(Rick D'Elia)

Americans Help Relieve Suffering in Rwanda 1994

Registered Nurse, Sister Terry Shields inects fluid into a child's ear while Rusty Dixon assits at the AmeriCares clinic in Buranga Rwanda, Oct., 1994. Shields of Bryn Mawr, Penn., and Dixon of Seattle, Wash., volunteered at the clinic set up by the New Canaan, Conn. humanitarian organization halfway between the refugee camps in Goma, Zaire (now Congo) and the Rwandan capitol, Kigali. The child suffered from dizziness from excessive material in the ear. The organization operated the clinic from Aug., to Dec., 1994.They treated refugees on their way home as well as people living in the area suffering from ailments resulting from unclean living conditions as well as conflicts with neighbors and occasional discovery of unused ordinance littering the countryside. The living conditions resulted from the destruction of the country's infrastructures in the genocide and civil war in 1994.

Northern Uganda Conflict Lira Food Distribution

A resident of an Internally Displaced Persons camp near Lira Uganda receives his family's part of the first rural food distribution in the Lira district. The camp is one of 44 in the northern Uganda district established for people who could not stay in their vilages for fear of attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army. World Food Programme in conjunction with US aid organization Samaritan's Purse, began the monthly program Thursday April 20, 2004 for people in camps located farther from the small city center of Lira Town. As the northern conflict flared mid-2003 in Lira District, many fled the rebel force establishing camps near Lira town as well as in the countryside.As the rainy season begins, some are moving to the more rural camps to attempt to begin planting crops. WFP has been distributing food in other districts of the conflict ridden area as far back as 1996. (Rick D'Elia)

CRS Work in Kampala, Uganda

Students study in the church sanctuary at the Sharing and Caring Center in Kamwokya, Kampala, Uganda March 22, 2004. The church serves as a classroom for students who have lost parents to HIV/AIDS and cannot affort public school. The program also accepts the very poor who have parents but who still cannot afford the public system. (Rick D'Elia)

Northern Uganda Conflict

Maria Angela Aryemo listens to paralegals talk about landmine recognition during a seminar in Gulu, Uganda March 24, 2004. Catholic Relief Services sponsored training for paralegals who are involved in resolving conflicts in the community as well educate people on human rights, land law and domestic violence. Northern Uganda has been consumed with conflict involving the Lord's Resistance Army for 18 years causing social breakdown which projects such as this are attempting to rebuild. Funding comes through USAID through Comunity resillience and Dialogue. The peace-building portion of the CRD program is administrated by CRS. (Rick D'Elia)

Northern Uganda Conflict

A fire consumes the roofs and contents of two huts in Pabbo Camp for internally displaced persons north of Gulu, Uganda, July 5, 2004. An 18-year-old conflict witht eh Lord's Resistance Army has forced nearly two million in to camps across northern Uganda for security. At Pabbo, the largest of the IDP camps, fires are common. No one was injured in this fire. (Rick D'Elia)

A Cambodian elder hosts a meeting of health board of Kampongpnov Village health center board to discuss issues and needs of their area. Their program is among those healthcare activities in Battambang province supported by CRS to bring up local health care to the national standards. Battambang is one of the regions that suffered the longest in civil war that ended in 1991. CRS has helped to establish village health centers promoting among other things, breast feeding and the prevention of HIV/AIDS. (Rick D'Elia)

A woman butchers ribs sells in the thriving market of Battambang in northwestern Cambodia. After enduring genocide from 1975-79 where the educated and non-full blooded Khmers were killed, Cambodians suffered through years of civil war to defeat the Khmer Rouge before finally finding peace it early 1990s. Now they work hard to recover and develop their economy. (Rick D'Elia)

Path Sokha, 38 feeds fellow patient, a sickly Pheap Sina, 26, after her return from the hospital. While kitchen staff prepared a meal for residents, Path cut up a piece of meat bedside, for her friend. They are among the 12 residents of the Catholic Relief Services-sponsored Maryknoll Seedlings of Hope hospice center in Phnom Penh. The center used to be a place where HIV/AIDS victims went to die. Now with government-sponsored availability of anti-retro virals, some patients come to the home to get help in getting over difficult health hurdles. Established in 2000, the center has been home to 639 patients who have benefitted from three meals a day, regular doctors visits, and 24-hour staffing. Cambodia has experienced an infection rate just under two percent, the highest in Southeast Asia. (Rick D'Elia)

Eugenie Mukendanga tastes coffee in order to grade its quality in the in the National Specialty Coffee Quality Laboratory and Training Center near Butare, Rwanda. The grade will determine whether the coffee is ordinary or suitable for gourmet roasting. With the help of the USAID funded project, SPREAD, the coffee business has been gaining ground in Rwanda where the quality and market price earned by farmers across the country has been increasing annually. Last year, the country exported, according to Tim Schilling director of SPREAD, gourmet coffee exports increased from 2,000 tons in 2006 to 3,000 in 2007, with the overall quality doubling each year. Rwanda exported 25,000 tons of coffee in total last year. In the US this coffee appears in Whole Foods Stores and Starbuck Coffee Houses among others. SPREAD not only trains farmers to increase coffee bean quality but tries to more directly connect farmers to roasters to produce fair trade coffee. (Rick D'Elia)

A child poses with friends and his woooden bike in Huye, Rwanda. (Rick D'Elia)

Dr. Bonaventure Nshizirungu examines Nisizimana, 10, in the AIDSRelief-sponsored Bungwe Health Center. The child preented symptoms that the health center workers felt needed further examination to determine treatment. While visiting the Bungwe site to counsel and treat AIDS Relief clients, the doctor will usually see other cases that are challenging the staff for a diagnosis. (Rick D'Elia)

Scenes around Santiago Aititlan, Guatemala, April 19-20, 2007. (Rick D'Elia)