Our Mission & Values

Guided by our core values and principles, Mercy Health Initiative is committed to addressing health issues and humanitarian needs in Somalia.

Our Mission

Mercy Health Initiative seeks to address health issues affecting the communities of the region through emergency programming in health, water and sanitation, nutrition, protection, livelihood, outreach programs and training.

Our Vision

To endeavor humanitarian needs in the region as a whole to achieve self-sufficiency for the necessities such as public health services, basic education, poverty, cohesive and peaceful society that is capable of deciding their own future.

To address the sufferings of communities in the region and contribute to sustainable development through the promotion of community health services.

Our Core Values

Our values guide every aspect of our work and interactions with the communities we serve.

Credibility

We seek to generate findings that are of immediate use to communities in their quest for sustainable integrated development. Our services are the result of credible processes that are easily verifiable.

Equality

We apply the principle of equality at all times, basing our interventions on the scale and levels of need, not on the identity or characteristics of the needy.

Respect

All interactions by MERCY are characterized by mutual respect — respect of ourselves and our institution and for our clients.

Integrity

We are committed to upholding the highest moral standards in our operations and interact with others honestly and faithfully.

Dignity

We hold every person to be worthy of esteem and respect. We consciously uphold and promote the dignity of all our clients in all our dealings.

Our Guiding Principles

MERCY HEALTH INITIATIVE's guiding principles are determined by the need to create a proactive post-war Somalia community that values the dignity of human life and helps develop communities and individuals to the fullest of their abilities.

Basic Humanitarian Needs and Imperatives Come First

MERCY's sworn values in human beings compel it to mobilize and provide humanitarian assistance to whoever needs it and wherever they are. The prime motivation for such responses to needs in disasters is ingrained in the desire to uphold human dignity and alleviate suffering amongst those least able to withstand the stress caused by such disasters.

Tracking the Forgotten People

MERCY places high premiums on the rational application of emergency aid and development assistance — to those who need it most, with special focus on communities hit by forgotten crises and/or receiving little or no attention and help. In order to reach this category, the organization strives to exercise flexibility in resource mobilization by among others, maintaining a broad constituency of alternate sources of funds including local and international donors.

A Multi-Sectoral Organization Able to Address Varied Needs

In keeping with its priority of serving the victims of a variety of crises, MERCY seeks to develop a range of programs with inter-linkages adapted to the specific needs of communities it works with. Thus, MERCY is basically organized and subsequently structured to enable it to implement a broad scope of programs that address an array of humanitarian needs like food, water, health, and shelter.

Importance of Networking and Information

MERCY gives high priority to the development of quality and long-term relationships based on respect, trust, and integrity with all the individuals, organizations and communities it works with. This is also true for individual MERCY staff and between teams. After conflict and war, we recognize the need for reconciliation to restore relationships and consolidate peace. MERCY is committed to promoting and facilitating this process.

Commitment to Partnerships and Institutional Linkages

MERCY recognizes that humanitarian aid actors are highly complementary and inter-dependent. MERCY therefore embraces structured partnerships and institutional linkages to not only enrich avenues for tapping into comparative advantages and collective synergies but also gain access to shared valuable information, knowledge and resources with a broad variety of local and international organizations. Even where active resource-level partnerships cannot be attained, coordination remains critical, if only to achieve set mutual goals.

Our Objectives

We are committed to achieving these key objectives through our programs and initiatives.

Main Objectives

Preventive health care
Maternal Care
Water and Sanitation
Mother and Child care
Health Education
Environmental Conservation (Hygienic)
Women and Youth Empowerment
Training of Health staff (Nurses, Midwifery)
Mental Health trainings

Specific Objectives

To establish centers for training in health matters
To improve the health standard of communities; decreased morbidity and mortality through provision of primary health care
To provide access to safe and clean water to communities and improve the hygienic standard
To promote health among the communities through awareness session on fistula
To respond to the local communities' emergency humanitarian concerns in order to reduce preventable death and suffering among the vulnerable populations
To draw the attention of the International Humanitarian Community to the local communities' humanitarian priority concerns for their information and intervention
To raise the local communities' awareness on the available local resource utilization, best practices so that they can solve their own problems that are within their influence
To advocate for peaceful co-existence and non-discrimination among the communities living in the region
To extend healthy nutrition values to the communities