Topic: Crisis Response

CARE team of aid workers and volunteer refugee staff participates in “Dead to Red” marathon in Jordan and tells of their epic journey

CARE Emergency Team Leader Alain Lapierre was recently in Upper Nile State’s UN compound in Malakal scaling up CARE’s water sanitation and hygiene response for people displaced by South Sudan’s internal conflict.

Sports have always been a big part in my life. I spent a good portion of my childhood and teenage years playing sports in my hometown Los Angeles. I played soccer, volleyball and softball. For ten years, I coached a high school girls’ volleyball team. However, on the 13th of March, I will take on the biggest sport’s challenge of my life so far.

A team of ten CARE aid workers and Syrian refugees will run the 242 kilometre “Dead 2 Red” marathon in Jordan to raise awareness and funds for the plight of more than ten million people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. The marathon will take place on March 13th. Exactly three years have passed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria.

For the past few years I have been working with Syrian refugees in Jordan and I soon realised that they not only need a place to stay, enough food, water and medical treatment, but they also need to heal.

Nicholas Brooks, a Senior Emergency Water and Sanitation (WASH) Advisor with CARE International, has recently returned from Uganda, where he came face to face with the plight of South Sudanese refugees

I will never forget the 11th of December 2012. It was the day when the life that I knew ceased to exist. It was the day my mother was killed by a sniper, my sister lost her baby and my brother-in-law was arrested. We were on our way to the hospital in Damascus because my little sister was going into labour.

I have been working with various humanitarian organisations in different countries for the past ten years. I have worked in Columbia, Palestine, Ethiopia, Mexico, Sudan and South Sudan. I have seen a lot of people suffering due to natural disasters and man-made crises.

Three years ago, I was studying economics at the University of Damascus. For me, these were the best days of my life. I guess it’s the same everywhere in the world; when we finish high school we choose to study something that really interests us, meet new friends, start to stand on our own two feet and prepare ourselves for the future. I feel that this experience was taken from me.