Why does so much emergency and food aid fail?

Our hearts and wallets open up when emergency strikes—whether natural or by the hand of man. Yet so much humanitarian aid fails the most basic standard: do no harm.

In the face of crisis, too often we abandon our principles of what we know makes for good community development and human rights work: Local, representative organizations with deep community roots. In crisis, understandably, we focus on the service-delivery—food rations, medicines, shelter—rather than on the service deliverers.

Our partners in Guatemala have told us: the current food crisis will continue unless we guarantee the land, water and seeds rights of communities necessary to grow food. The same message is being echoed in Brazil, Mexico and many neighborhoods in the U.S.

In two separate statements, Guatemala's National Peasant and Indigenous Coordination (CONIC) and Brazil's Small Producers Movement (MPA) put forth food sovereignty as a solution to the crisis: the right of communities to produce food for local markets and for consumers to have access to local healthy foods. Both organizations denounce the expansion of industrial agriculture and growing control of agribusinesses for contributing to the hunger of urban and rural communities.

Dozens of people have been killed and tens of thousands displaced across South Africa in a wave of anti-immigrant violence over the past several weeks. This comes against a backdrop of growing impatience with the government's anemic efforts to overcome the chronic poverty and massive social inequality inherited from the apartheid era, now more than a decade and a half behind them, and in the face of rising political violence in neighboring Zimbabwe from where many of the 5-10 million "foreigners" come.

Grassroots International was selected as a finalist for the MySpace Impact Awards. Grassroots is in the final 3, with the winner receiving a $10,000 donation and extensive promotion throughout the MySpace website. If you are a MySpace user, please vote for us right now, then each day until December 24th and forward this to others: http://www.myspace.com/impactawards.

The impact of Cyclone Sidr on Bangladesh has been enormous. Over 3,500 people have been killed, tens of thousands are still missing, and millions have been left homeless. Crops have been devastated and livestock destroyed. The bulk of the devastation has been in the southern coastal region-including the vast delta of the Ganga and Brahmaputra rivers-where more than 40 million people live.

Grassroots International currently does not work in South Asia but our Staff, Board and supporters recognize that besides the widespread devastation and the impact on peoples in the region, groups engaged in ongoing struggles for social and economic justice are also affected.

This week we received a letter from Chavannes Jean Baptiste, Executive Secretary of the Peasant Movement of Papaye, one of Grassroots International's partners in Haiti. His letter highlights the root causes of the ongoing neglect of rural communities in Haiti and the devastation in the countryside due to recent floods. Please read his words below:

The Farm Bill is one of the last major pieces of legislation that will make it to the floor of the Senate during the current legislative season, which makes it a ripe target for political maneuvering and special-interest pork.

Grassroots is working with a coalition of allies to fight for farming policies that will protect the human right to food, support family farmers in the United States and abroad and build a healthier food and farming system for consumers, communities and the environment.

The Senate's plan to set aside $25 million for locally-sourced food aid is a big win for family farmers in some of the world's poorest regions, but there is a lot that is still at stake in this farm bill.

Last week Hurricane Noel brought torrential rains and catastrophic floods to nearly the entire nation of Haiti, along with vast swaths of the rest of the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. The terrible human cost of the storm in Haiti is only now becoming clear.

We need your donation today to help the people of Haiti recover from this disaster and rebuild their lives and their communities.

The hardest hit by this catasrophe are Haiti's poorest, who were already living on the edge of deadly poverty.

We have some exciting news to share.

Your voice was heard in the U.S. Senate.

The Farm Bill, scheduled to be voted on by the full Senate next week, includes funding for a $25 million pilot project for locally-sourced food aid for hungry people around the world.

We want to thank you for your support of this crucial legislation.

This is a big win.

At the last minute, Senator Pat Roberts (KS-R) threatened to call an amendment that would have squashed the pilot project. Thanks to the support of activists like you, this program that will offer support to family farmers around the world and improve our ability to feed the hungry is alive.

We can do it with your help.

There are promising signs that this crucial legislation may pass the Senate, but we need your help to make it happen. Every call counts as the Farm Bill gets closer to a vote.

Call your Senators now and ask them to support food aid that works.