How do you respond to a mother whose child is dying of dehydration, or to a sister who has carried her sibling with a disability all the way from Mogadishu into an Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp hundreds of kilometres away? What about the once well-off family that lost all of their livestock to the drought?
The needs here in Somalia are overwhelming, but at the same time I have experienced much joy by being able to respond in a tangible way to these peoples stories.
I have been deployed to the Horn of Africa response, based in Puntland, Somalia. My role as a Program Officer is to meet with the community, government & UN agencies to find out what the most pressing needs are, and develop programmes that will address these needs. It is a huge and often overwhelming responsibility, but the people of Somalia know what their needs ...