Welcome to the New Year

All of us at One Million Bones hope that you and your families have had wonderful holidays.  Our staff took a well-deserved break and have come back to work with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

As part of our blog content for this upcoming year, I'm going to see if I can look at the ways that people in camps do the same things we do here at home.  Today, I'm looking at cooking.

So making a cup of tea isn't necessarily cooking, but when I want a cuppa at the office, I walk to our small kitchen area, turn on the electric kettle and, almost instantly, hot water for tea.  I never think twice about it.  But, today I did.  Today I made a decision to really think about how easy it is for me to have a cup of tea compared to the work, and risk, involved for so many women in camps who are preparing meals for themselves and their families.

Much of what I have found centers on the means for cooking, this article about alternative fuels in Kalma Camp in South Darfur, for example.

And this video, from Darfur Peace and Development, about using solar cookers in Sakali Camp, also in Darfur.

But this article, from the Guardian, gives a sense of what families have to eat and just how long it takes to prepare it in a number of different camps.

We'll be sharing more examples like this over the course of the year.  If you have topics you're interested in, let us know in the comments.

We hope you share our resolve to truly make a difference in the next year by raising awareness of the situation that millions find themselves in across the world, to raise funds for organizations that help families acquire the most basic human needs, and to keep pressure on our politicians and policy makers to address genocide and humanitarian crises around the world with policies that make a difference and have enough funding behind them to be useful.

Welcome to 2012; more power to us all to make a difference.

Comments

[Bruce @Printing Services]

Happy New Year as well! I'm wishing you guys all the best for 2012! :)