Elizabeth Stevens describes how a small, local NGO has had an outsized impact on Uganda’s refugee response. Heart, guts, big ideas, and an investor. If you are launching a tiny women’s organization into the rough-and-tumble world of humanitarian response, you had better have all four. That’s what I concluded from my time with African Women and Youth Action for Development …
Handwashing innovation
Joel Trotter describes how it feels to see Oxfam’s brand-new handwashing kit tested, refined, and ready to go into action. Oxfam’s Promotion and Practice Handwashing Kit is a robust, user-friendly handwashing station that is easily assembled in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. It allows for improved, timely handwashing and reduces people’s health risks in emergency displacement camps. It was …
Reinventing the toilet
Brian McSorley on Oxfam’s contribution to ensuring the poorest people on the planet have access to a loo. Earlier this month, Bill Gates stood up to address an international conference holding a jar full of human faeces. In a sector that has been underfunded and overlooked for decades, The Gates Foundation has been a disruptive and positive force in raising …
The future of humanitarian water provision is solar
For World Water Week, Oxfam Engineering Adviser Brian McSorley reflects on the achievements of the Global Solar Water Initiative and the potential of solar water pumps to transform lives and ways of working. Solar power offers so many possibilities for development and humanitarian aid, from lighting, to internet connectivity and water provision. If you are involved in helping communities access …
Five things I’ve learned being a humanitarian aid worker
This World Humanitarian Day, Iffat Tahmid Fatema, Oxfam public health worker, shares what it’s like helping people in our Rohingya refugee response in Bangladesh.
Yemen: civilians are not a target
This World Humanitarian Day, following a recent airstrike on a school bus, Alexandros Yiannopoulos explains why Oxfam is calling for a ceasefire to protect civilians in Yemen. In Northern Yemen last week, as I was preparing to write this blog, 41 children on a school trip were killed by a Saudi Coalition airstrike. All loss of life is a tragedy, …
Oxfam’s humanitarian superwomen in Somaliland,Tanzania and DRC
Three inspiring young local Oxfam humanitarian workers, talk about their lives and their commitment to providing aid to vulnerable communities.
Lighting up the lives of Rohingya Refugees
Oxfam and partners at Loughborough University are looking at how lighting can be used to reduce the perceived risk of gender based violence around water and sanitation facilities in camps.
Introducing the new Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action
For World Humanitarian Day Tess Dico-Young reflects on the process of producing the new, improved, IASC Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action. Huge shifts have occurred in the humanitarian sector and humanitarian programme cycles over the past twelve years, including in standards and expectations for the integration of gender equality. Which is why, under the leadership of UN Women, and with …