Conflicts over land erupted when worldwide prices for coffee plummeted in 2000. Many Guatemalan coffee plantations shut down and forced workers from their homes on the land — leading to violent confrontations between landlords and laid-off workers. The highest number of these confrontations occurred in Alta Verapaz. That's where Mercy Corps has been working since 2003 with its local partner, the Association of Lawyers for Legal Development, to peacefully resolve conflicts over land through negotiated consensus. We've established more than 10 mediation centers in the provinces, staffed with trained community volunteer paralegals, and a central mediation center with legal and surveying services in the departmental capital of Cobán. As a result, approximately 270 cases have been peacefully negotiated in the first two years, with 142 of those fully resolved. Nuevo Amanacer — the village featured in the first part of this video — was one of the first.

Conflicts over land erupted when worldwide prices for coffee plummeted in 2000. Many Guatemalan coffee plantations shut down and forced workers from their homes on the land — leading to violent confrontations between landlords and laid-off workers. The highest number of these confrontations occurred in Alta Verapaz. That's where Mercy Corps has been working since 2003 with its local partner, the Association of Lawyers for Legal Development, to peacefully resolve conflicts over land through negotiated consensus. We've established more than 10 mediation centers in the provinces, staffed with trained community volunteer paralegals, and a central mediation center with legal and surveying services in the departmental capital of Cobán. As a result, approximately 270 cases have been peacefully negotiated in the first two years, with 142 of those fully resolved. Nuevo Amanacer — the village featured in the first part of this video — was one of the first.

Mercy Corps' Action Center to End World Hunger works to eradicate hunger around the globe. We educate visitors about the root causes of hunger and poverty, motivate people to action, and provide the tools needed to engage a broader public in the ongoing struggle against poverty. Located just west of the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, the Action Center is scheduled to open on World Hunger Day, October 16, 2008 and will be a platform for global education and action, specifically focused on the root causes of global hunger. To learn more visit www.actioncenter.org

Paul Dudley Hart, Mercy Corps director-at-large, narrates this two-minute video about the agency's program to educate young people about HIV/AIDS in southern Sudan and how Nike is contributing.

This documentary highlights Mercy Corps' Deconstruction program in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina

Nimlajacoc, Guatemala — It's nearly three hours from this bucolic mountainside village, home to just 40 families, to the bustling department capital of Cobán. But today a rutted road isn't the only thing connecting the two. Thanks to the CHAI Project, funded by Oregon-based Tazo Tea, Mercy Corps began teaching a dozen women here how to become beekeepers last June, supplying them with materials for 20 hives. The result: about 5,000 Quetzales (about US$700) worth of honey harvested in the first year. The village consumed about 15 percent of the honey themselves, then bottled and sold the rest to restaurants and hotels in Cobán. With the profits they purchased supplies for another 18 hives and stocked away money in the community's savings-and-loan cooperative, which helps community members buy livestock and increase their production of cardamom and corn. "The training includes learning what is a beehive, how to breed and take care of bees, and how harvest the product and commercialize it," explains Carlos Aquino, manager of Mercy Corps' economic development programs in Guatemala. "It's been successful because it has improved their technological knowledge and they've been able to generate income from it. It's an activity that's easy to direct, it's friendly to the environment, and it's one in which women can participate in addition to men."

Travel Channel and Mercy Corps, the global humanitarian organization, team up to help victims of the tragic earthquake in China. Watch China Week on Travel Channel July 27th-August 1st from 8-11pm for our up close and personal tour of the world’s largest nation. As you watch you’ll find out more about the ways that Mercy Corps is helping the people of China, and learn how to support earthquake relief efforts yourself. Travel Channel’s China Week is your chance to explore the little-known natural treasures and secret wildlife havens of China’s wildest regions, on the all new six part series Wild China.

Clients of Mercy Corps Northwest, the Portland-area economic development arm of Mercy Corps, discuss how they have grown their businesses.

Mercy Corps' Tiana Tozer campaigns for Iraq's disabled.

Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Mercy Corps works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against nearly impossible odds. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1.3 billion in assistance to people in 100 nations. Supported by headquarters offices in North America, Europe and Asia, the agency's unified global programs employ 3,400 staff worldwide and reach nearly 14.4 million people in more than 35 countries. www.mercycorps.org