International Humanitarian Day: Fostering the Humanitarian Spirit

Every day, humanitarian disasters strike more and more places on the planet. These disasters cause enormous suffering for people – usually the poorest, most neglected, stigmatized and vulnerable individuals. Each year, an men and women from around the world lose their lives as they strive to ease the fate of most at-risk people. In 2008, the United Nations General Assembly decided to set apart a day, World Humanitarian Day, to pay tribute to work and sacrifices of humanitarian aid workers. Today, we remember these individuals every year on the 19th of August.

World Humanitarian Day is also an opportunity to celebrate the spirit that inspires humanitarian work around the globe. This year, World Vision International in Azerbaijan is also celebrating our 20th anniversary of serving the Azerbaijani people. We join the international community in honouring the courage and passion of the committed humanitarian workers in Azerbaijan and around the globe. World Vision’s staff have bravely and tirelessly served the people in Azerbaijan following the war in the 1990s.

2014 marks the tenth anniversary of the “Yeni Hayat” (New life) shelter built by World Vision for internally displaced people in Mingachevir, Azerbaijan. Over the past decade, we have been able to observe significant changes in lives of more than 400 families who found refuge in this camp.

International Humanitarian Day is a time to recognize the families who have been forced to flee, and who have faced the horror of war and lost their children and their hopes.

Today, through its resilience programmes, World Vision strives to build safe environments and contributes to helping the communities flourish. People affected by disasters are the first to help their own communities following a disaster. Communities, local partner organizations, international organizations and the general public can build a chain of solidarity to support communities in responding to and recovering from disasters. In this sense, everyone can be a humanitarian.

In Azerbaijan, World Vision carries out projects to secure a better future for children and help their parents become better able to provide for their needs.

The “Sheki-Zagatala Development Model” project implemented by World Vision in Azerbaijan in rural farming communities is focused in helping provide people with the knowledge and skills they need to enable them to adopt more productive, sustainable and resilient crop and livestock production practices, resulting in increased household income and a more varied and reliable diet. We also help farmers find ways to access information about the most profitable crops to grow, better ways to store and process their harvests and to market their produce.

In Azerbaijan, World Vision aims to serve around 1,500 farmers through education, mentoring and business start-up grants to selected job seekers and business starters.