Michael has spent much of the past decade working in conflict-affected environments, mostly as an adviser for FCDO and USAID OTI programs in locations including Uruzgan and Syria. He also served as the civilian stabilization adviser to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Syria/Iraq Stabilization Review in 2017. In 2020 he led the startup team…
Six years into the Yemen conflict, the war shows no sign of abating. The situation is dire: 80% of Yemen’s population of 30 million requires some form of humanitarian assistance; nearly half the population is in acute need. With violence spilling across Yemen’s borders and threatening maritime security in the Red Sea’s strategically important Bab el-Mandab Strait, regional…
Every day, Jordan’s Al Ghabawi landfill receives 3,200 tons of Amman’s waste. According to Greater Amman Municipality estimates, the commercial center generates at least 40 percent of this waste. Amman’s waste generation is climbing by more than 5 percent per year, and optimistic estimates peg Amman’s recycling rate at 7 percent, well below other cities…
Syria Regional Program II (SRP II) operated with the goal of achieving a moderate, inclusive, and stable Syria. The project maintained and increased the influence of strategic moderate entities, strengthened communities to better resist extremism, and enabled the early recovery of newly liberated areas from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by providing…
Ralph Titus is a commercial supply chain professional with an MSM in supply chain and a CPPM in project management. He is experienced in strategic development and process improvements in manual and automated commercial, humanitarian response, and developmental logistics in North and Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Mid East, and Sub-Sahara Africa. He is a…
COVID-19 has forced the development community to pivot programming and innovate to bridge the physical divide that social distancing has imposed. Mohammad Youssef is the director of programs for the U.S. State Department-funded Injaz education project in Syria. In this blog, Mohammad reflects on new COVID-induced challenges, and how his background in IT has helped him…
In Tunisia, high unemployment — particularly among college-educated youth — has been an ongoing source of sociopolitical tension and has left some Tunisian youth more susceptible to recruitment by extremist political groups. This is especially true in Tunisia’s rural regions, which are economically disadvantaged. For Tunisia to succeed politically and economically, it must focus on…
Sahar Tabaja is a conflict specialist with more than 15 years of experience designing and managing stabilization, governance, P/CVE, and peacebuilding programs in the Middle East. Her work has focused on exploring how youth, women, civil society, and local actors can positively change governance practices, alter conflict systems, and enable societal peace in fragile environments.…
On August 4, 2020, some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored for years at the Port of Beirut exploded, emitting a mushroom cloud of pink and yellow smoke. People felt the material impact up to 100 miles away. The death toll on the second day of the explosion exceeded 100 residents, and…
Bilal Al Ayoubi is the Task Order 2 director of USAID’s Lebanon Community Support Program (CSP). He previously served as the senior program development specialist on the Chemonics-implemented Lebanon Civic Support Initiative and as senior transition advisor for the Yemen Stabilization Initiative with Development Transformations, both projects funded by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives between…
Gordon Brown is a supply chain management specialist with over 17 years of logistics management experience across a variety of challenging environments. As a supply chain professional and trade specialist, his roles have included project management, last-mile distribution, retail and pharmacy logistics, imports and exports, business development, and freight forwarding. Gordon spent 10 years working…