Katarzyna (center) and colleagues
Shopping with vouchers.
Photos courtesy of Egala Foundation.
We were about to send out this newsletter when, over the weekend, something astonishing happened: Syrian rebels entered Damascus and drove the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad out of power. Syria’s horrific civil war had dragged on for 13 years and then, within a matter of days, it was over.
Humanity Now was born, in large part, because of the misery in Syria. Back in 2016, when we began our humanitarian efforts in Greece, a large percentage of the refugees we were trying to help had come from Syria.
Nobody knows what will happen next, or if these new leaders will establish a government that allows people to live with dignity and in peace. Over the past few days, we’ve been messaging with Syrian friends to gauge their reactions. Most are elated, but also uncertain about the future. Our hearts are with the people of Syria.
The Value of Our Partners
This month’s newsletter focuses on a major question about the work we do. If you want to help displaced people, why support tiny, locally based humanitarian aid teams when you could donate to the more prominent international organizations everyone’s been hearing about for years? Humanity Now chooses to work with these local grassroots teams because we believe they provide the best value and most benefit for our funding.
Last week, for example, we heard from Katarzyna Poskrobko from the Polish grassroots organization Egala, which recently received a Humanity Now grant of $6000. She told us that, so far, the team has used our funding to purchase 150 supermarket shopping vouchers, 275 bus tickets, 15 monthly bus passes for people living in camps, and food staples for people from many different countries. The team also organized Polish language classes and workshops about Polish society. And, Katarzyna wrote, “We still have unspent funds.”
Clearly, Egala doesn’t waste money, but such wise spending isn’t a given in the humanitarian world. In fact, several large international aid organizations, including the International Committee for the Red Cross and Save the Children, are currently experiencing severe funding shortages. Critics point to excessive growth as part of the problem. Instead of helping to strengthen small grassroots organizations, these international institutions often employ an expensive, top-down approach to aid distribution. “If they were strengthening local actors, they would never have grown so much in the first place,” author and aid specialist Deborah Doane told The New Humanitarian earlier this year.
Humanity Now’s partners are tiny, but they do excellent work and they show real sensitivity to the needs of the people they serve. Egala’s Katarzyna described how, at one recent workshop, participants shared how they feel when they hear the word “Poland.” Katarzyna told us, “We talked about . . . what can help to achieve happiness. It turned out that people really need friends! We know that the environment around us is often not friendly, we know how much there is to do in this matter, but we do not intend to give up. We see the results of our work and this is the best motivation for us!”
When our partners show such great results, we feel motivated to continue our work, too.
