Working together to build stronger communities
By working with humanitarian organisations like Mercy Corps, Shell helps communities recover from crises and provides families with life-changing skills.
For the thousands of displaced families suffering from Somalia’s crippling drought, basic access to clean water is a daily struggle. As the drought worsened recently, Shell has been helping Mercy Corps provide urgent, life-saving support across the country.
This forms part of Shell’s wider efforts to support communities around the world.
Life-saving disaster relief
Shell adopted Mercy Corps as one of its global emergency and disaster relief partners in 2016 in response to the drought affecting thousands of people in Somalia’s Baidoa region.
“The situation is dire,” says Daud Jiran who heads up the disaster relief programme in Somalia for Mercy Corps. “New people are being displaced every day and we are expecting the crisis to become even more severe in the coming months.”
Drought has led to severe water shortages across the country, increasing the price of water by over 20%.
Shell and Mercy Corps have provided clean water, sanitation and food packages, which are also helping to tackle deadly diseases such as acute water diarrhoea and cholera.
Sowing seeds of change
Elsewhere, Shell and Mercy Corps have helped to improve the long-term futures of more than 25,000 people in the countries where we partner, including in China, Indonesia and Timor Leste.
In 2014 in Sichuan province, southwest China, Shell worked with farmers to improve their agricultural practices. This included training them in new farming techniques as well as in ways of diversifying their crops and teaching them business and marketing skills. In 2015 farmers in the area had a successful harvest with incomes almost doubling.
Read the story “Helping farmers in China’s Sichuan province”
Mercy Corps is a global organisation with the belief that a better world is possible. They partner with communities, governments and the private sector in more than 40 countries to help lift people out of crisis and build stronger communities from within.
Since 2014, Shell and Mercy Corps have worked together, focusing on building skills and livelihoods as well as providing access to energy for some of the most vulnerable communities in the places where we both work.
Find out more: Mercy Corps
“Shell and Mercy Corps’ global partnership is an innovative example of a collaboration between an NGO and multi-national based on a joint vision of building stronger communities.”
A global mentoring programme
Globally, Shell is also supporting MicroMentor, Mercy Corps’ online mentoring scheme that connects small business owners and entrepreneurs with skilled business mentors. The service now has more than 47,000 users. Since joining the programme, small businesses have, on average, grown their revenues by 39.5% and added two new jobs to their local economy.
Looking to the future
Shell’s work with global partners like Mercy Corps helps us to find new ways of reducing our environmental and societal impact. It also aims to improve the quality of land and water around our operations and benefit local communities.
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Helping farmers in China's Sichuan Province
How a partnership between Shell and non-government organisation Mercy Corps helped local farmers with their business and agricultural practices.
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