Why the change?

I think Prosper Global is a much clearer description of the way we work and our values and what we believe in.

When we looked at the name Mercy Corps, it didn't resonate with who we were, the work we were doing.

And in fact, in a lot of ways, it was the opposite.

And I think Mercy Corps was founded in the 80s in that old school paradigm of people jumping in from America or wherever, bringing goods to people.

saying that I'm merciful to you is just the exact opposite of the way that we work.

Like 90% of our staff lives and works in the communities we serve.

So how has this shift going to lead these people and these women in communities to prosperity?

But in Yemen, which imports the majority of its food, tell me what has happened to the price of food, what's happened to the price of fuel, and what's the effect?

This really, we talk about fuel.

This is very much a food crisis.

Yemen imports the vast majority of food.

That food comes over on the same containers.

The other component of this is this is also where fertilizer comes from.

A lot of the fertilizer in the region has to come through that area.

When you say 20% of the kind of funding that is necessary, break that down for me.

Was that related to the

rebrand? I think Syria is a great example of the rebrand and the need to move this conversation that you can't just settle for survival.

You have a country that is emerging from a 14-year civil war.

So it's, you know, it's a country that needs to rebuild.

It's facing just great devastation.

I saw a lot of rubble.

I did a road trip from Aleppo and it lived down to Damascus.

Are there things that you've learned about leadership, otherwise, things that others might benefit from that maybe you wouldn't have appreciated if you hadn't, you know, had to go through it? In

Was that related to the rebrand?

I think Syria is a great example of the rebrand and the need to move this conversation, that you can't just settle for survival.

You have a country that is emerging from a 14-year civil war.

Um, so it's, you know, it's a country that needs to rebuild.

It's, it's facing just great devastation.

I saw a lot of rubble.

We...

Are, are there things that you've learned, uh, about leadership otherwise, things that others might benefit from that maybe you wouldn't have appreciated if you hadn't, you know, had to go through it?

So what are the workarounds? Is, for example, cash assistance something that is being looked at? Is it time for a novel approach? Is it time for something new that's none of those things? Yes.

So Gaza has long been one of the most difficult places in the world for humanitarian organizations to act because of restrictions and what you can bring in and different bureaucratic impediments that were set up.

So those of us who were there know how to work well in Gaza.

We do use a lot of cash because we want to support the local markets in Gaza.

But then when you're not allowing things to be shipped in, what's there available for people to buy? When the infrastructure has been so badly damaged, what can you do to correct that? So Gaza remains a political challenge, and a lot of the impediments change.

are ones that have been set up for political reasons.

And so I think we need the pressure to resolve that, right? We need safe access to people.

Do you feel hopeful? Do you feel like we're just going to stay here a while?

So how in the world do you, as a leader of Mercy Corps, decide where to begin?

You know, it's so challenging, and it's so unprecedented, and right now we have over three hundred million people, three hundred and five million people in need of emergency humanitarian support.

And that is twice the number of people that we had before the pandemic.

So you have the largest number of people in need every day, probably the largest number of, of conflicts that, that we've really ever registered, and at the same time, we've seen emergency aid from five of the largest donors in the world fell by nearly fifty-four percent.

And the US, of course, was the largest of those donors, and that has been just really consequential given its historic role as the world's largest humanitarian donor.

Um, one of the humanitarian principles that we live by is to go where the need is greatest.

And so we are constantly trying to be there where the need is greatest, but we also are limited by the funding that we have for, for those environments.

[laughs]

Jada Doyan McKenna is the CEO of Mercy Corps, a humanitarian organization working on Sudan's front lines.

Some people have had to resort to eating leaves to survive because of a lack of food.

And even when people do have access to it, the ability to afford it is even worse at this point.

We are seeing this irregularity of supply as well as the price spikes are really locking in food insecurity and hunger situations for years to come.

But humanitarians say the world has not put enough pressure or provided enough assistance to Sudan's neediest.

It's shameful, really.

There are lives being lost that did not need to be lost because of this indifference.

that we're seeing.

I mean, we recently had the US president threatening desalination plants and power plants as if that was normal.

Yeah.

We are sadly entering what, what I'm calling an era of indifference.

Um, you know, attacks on civilian infrastructure were considered war crimes.

They're, they're not legitimate means.

And, and starting with the Ukraine War and on down, we've seen increasing attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Like, uh, um, you know, deliberate attacks on hospitals, um, in Ukraine.

So how does an organization like yours, Mercy Corps, try to, uh, [laughs] assist when it's these larger structural problems that you're having to overcome, and the people who are coming to you are saying, "Listen, I'm a farmer, but the irrigation system just got bombed, and I need money for seed, and my fertilizer costs and my fuel costs are up." Where do you begin?

So, so what, what did you do? I mean, you faced a slew of, like, urgent decisions.

They, they were urgent decisions, and I have to say, it was, um, it was very clumsy, right? Usually when you work with the government, there are, like, definitions for every single thing.

(laughs) Um, so, like, very specific definition for stop or very s- specific definition for freeze.

And in this case, the guidance wasn't there.

When they said we had to stop doing everything, our first concern was, was safety for people.

You know, if I have people in a remote area, uh, of a country or, um, in charge of delivering food to a school feeding program next day, that community didn't understand that we weren't showing up the next day.

And they certainly didn't understand it was because the US government told us not to.

... hot button.

Are your teams still active on the ground there now? What are they seeing and what might our listeners be missing in the news reports that they're getting?

We have about 35 staff that are still on the ground living and working in Gaza.

We've had about 1,300 trucks stuck at a border that have not been able to get in.

We've had some food in those trucks expire in that time period.

And even without those trucks, our teams on the ground were working with water desalination plants and getting supplies.

like supplying clean water to people.

It's so dire right now.

Did you do that also with, like, diversity, DEI? I mean, it's another area that became sort of a hot button.

Yesterday, I spoke with Tjada Doyen McKenna, the CEO of the global humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, and I began by asking her what she's hearing from her teams on the ground in the Gaza Strip.

I was speaking to a team member this morning who's been going in and out and she was telling me that she's noticed the differences just in the past few weeks.

So there are certain entry points where they know that the UN and the aid trucks come in.

She said now you'll see, like, crowds and crowds of people, uh, with children and women just right there as the trucks come up.

They're so hungry and they know that no food is coming in, so people are there desperately waiting to get to the trucks.

The trucks can barely move.

She also said even our own team members she's noticed in the past three to four weeks their weight has gone down.

What do you make of that? Is there a distinction there?