welcome welcome home: Inside ARC - 9.19.13

Hi jay,

Here's an update on what's been going on around ARC the last few weeks.

Let us know if you have any questions.

-Daniel

Daniel Wordsworth, President

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*New Camp in Rwanda*

People continue to flee the crisis in Congo. The four main Congolese refugee camps in Rwanda — all of which are managed by ARC—are full to capacity. And the transit camp on the border has once again exceeded its capacity of 6,000, resulting in overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. And still more refugees are en route.

The United Nations and Rwandan Government have decided to open a fifth refugee camp in Mugombwa in the southern province that could house up to 15,000 residents. This week, ARC’s Rwanda team conducted a rapid assessment at the site, including surveying for site design, assessing water sources, and identifying environmental challenges. Below is an image of the site. Stay tuned for updates about this new camp.

*The Changemaker's Award*

We recently launched an ideas competition to collect new and fresh ideas from our 1,000+ staff members around the world. All staff, worldwide, are eligible to participate. The question we’ve asked is: If you could do one simple thing, how would you make the ARC experience better for the people we serve?

The goal is to generate dozens of ideas from our staff around the world, ideas that we can share across the organization and with other organizations working in our field. However, one winning idea will be chosen, and the country office that generates the idea will be awarded $10,000 to spend on their program at their discretion. Once the contest has concluded, we look forward to sharing some of our staff’s new and exciting ideas with you!

*Youth. Somalia. Microenterprise*

Last week, Said Sheik-Abdi (an ARC Program Manager) and I spoke to a small group of ARC supporters about a new program we’re launching in Somalia. Somalia suffers from terrible unemployment (66%) – and opportunities for youth are very few. We’re launching a microenterprise program – with several other partners – with the goal of getting 50,000 youth self-employed within the next 3 years.

If you’d like to hear more about it, here’s an excerpt from my presentation (it’s about 6 minutes long): http://www.arcrelief.org/somaliabriefing.mp3

The Star Tribune also ran an article about the project just yesterday. You can find it here: http://www.startribune.com/local/224149231.html