Mercy Corps – with the support of Trisha Bury, a Strategic Response Manager – is helping Ukrainians feed, clothe, and earn for themselves rather than being passive recipients of aid.

Trisha’s passion personifies Mercy Corps’ global vision “to create a future of possibility, where everyone can prosper.” Hailing from Port Angeles, Washington, she studied international relations and international development in college and grad school.

“I wanted an international career that would challenge me and eventually I ended up in humanitarian aid which I’ve now been doing for over a decade,” she says.

Her work mainly revolves around providing support to Mercy Corps teams around the world; essentially, starting up new programs, plugging in for temporary vacant leadership gaps, or guiding country teams in times of high-impact change. “I deployed to support our teams in Haiti, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. And now Ukraine,” she adds.

Mercy Corps has a solid humanitarian legacy. It has worked globally in some of the world’s most volatile places for over 40 years – channeling disaster management and recovery work. “We are currently present in about 40 countries. We have over 6,000 staff globally,” she reveals.

From Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan, fresh humanitarian disasters are rolling out every year. It must be hard for Mercy Corps to quickly prioritize who needs help, how much, and for how long.

“Yeah, there really is,” she says of the competing, demanding situations.

One way of making that choice is to work where Mercy Corps can have the biggest impact, leveraging its global and local expertise, and the resources that are available in terms of both funding and human resources.

“Globally, we’re specialized in food security, water security, economic opportunity, and peace and good governance, and humanitarian aid is sort of a cross-cutting area of work that we do,” she says.

Ukraine is among the most challenging humanitarian regions of recent times. As per UN figures – Russia’s invasion has killed 10,000 civilians to date and damaged $138 billion in hard infrastructure as of January 2023.

Between water, food, and medical support for vulnerable Ukrainians, it’s tricky to know what gets priority.

“Needs differ widely across the country. We have people in the east and the south of the country close to the front lines who are affected directly by the conflict. So often we have people whose homes are damaged by shelling; maybe water and electricity services might be cut off. Medical services might also be compromised. Here in Kyiv or over in the west, you have a lot more people who are displaced from those areas; they may have problems re-establishing their livelihoods. Finding houses to rent for the medium- or long-term, until the situation stabilizes in their home region, is key,” she says.

Read the full article about helping Ukrainians by Ray Mwareya at Global Washington.