Skip to main content

Impact Stories

The Humanitarian Coalition members are taking care of basic survival needs and helping people rebuild their lives when their homes, schools and livelihoods have been devastated by a disaster. Learn more about these crises and meet people who have benefited from your support.

The roof on Josephine’s house had caved in and the structural damage made it unsafe to enter. Her 12-member household, including extended family, had nowhere to go, so they set up a makeshift tent beside their house.

Haseena’s family, like many others in her village, were suffering from the double calamity — a weather disaster that damaged food stocks and water infrastructure and blocked off roads, and the impact of a global pandemic on a rural economy.
After dinner, Sonia’s father, Jonny, had to head back to work at their family restaurant. Sonia and her mother, Georgie, decided to invite their neighbour for birthday cake. That’s when the explosion in the port of Beirut happened.
When floods came to his village in Mali, Gaboukoro Traoré didn’t have much time to pack. “We were alerted by the arrival of runoff water just a few hours before it reached my village, so we were only able to save a few materials and animals. My whole house collapsed and was washed away.”

Najat Hamid, a member of the community, leads the workshop. She is regarded as a champion of proper hygiene in her community but it wasn’t too long ago that she was sitting in these training sessions herself, hoping to learn how to protect her children’s health.

Twelve-year-old Tino has had to deal with serious trauma. She lost both her parents and all three of her siblings when Cyclone Idai struck her village in Zimbabwe, and washed her house away in the middle of the night.
Nasima lives in the Jamalpur district of Bangladesh where more than 2 million people were affected by floods in July 2019. More than 100,000 hectares of crops were washed away -- a land area the size of Toronto.
In August 2019, when wildfires burned out of control in Bolivia, wells and drinking water were contaminated.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on September 28, followed by a tsunami with waves up to 6 metres high. The quake led to the liquefaction of the soil in some places, softening the earth and causing it to flow.

Ten days of heavy rain caused flooding to six of Mali’s 10 regions at the end of August 2019. Houses and farmland were damaged, the market and cemetery in Guiré were flooded, and schools, health centres, latrines and wells were damaged. Alou and his large family were not spared.

In July 2019, heavy rain caused intense flooding across Northern Bangladesh, where Abeda lives. Nearly 7.6 million people were affected by the flooding, which was most severe in the District of Jamalpur.

With support from the Humanitarian Coalition and the government of Canada, Islamic Relief was in Jogendra’s community, responding with life-saving support to the affected population. They provided shelter, food and household items, water and hygiene, and organized cash-for-work projects.