Skip to content

Other Languages

Photo Essay:
Jazba-e-Tameer (The Desire to Rebuild)
Photography by Mark Edwards

Featuring the Internews Pakistan Emergency Information Project

"We live in a remote area. No television or newspapers. We get all our information from Jazba."
Zafar Khan, Bali Mang village, Mansehra
Jazba-e-Tameer audience poll, June 7-20, 2006

3 children stand in front of a tentThe October 8th, 2005 earthquake in Pakistan killed more than 80,000 people and left another 3.5 million homeless. Within days of the disaster, a team of young Pakistani reporters were producing a daily hour-long program on humanitarian information for survivors.

The program, Jazba-e-Tameer (Desire to Rebuild), was broadcast by three emergency radio stations by November 15th and by a total of 17 radio stations across the earthquake zone and the country within four months of the disaster.

In January 2006, world class photographer Mark Edwards spent a week following the reporting team into affected communities as they gathered information and feedback for the daily program.

Internews’ post-earthquake work in Pakistan was funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

An exhibition of the photos that Edwards took in Pakistan is being hosted by the headquarters of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Berne. The photos will also be shown at the World Congress on Communication for Development in Rome, Italy and the UK Department for International Development.

Please contact Mark Edwards at Still Pictures regarding permission to use any of the photos.

View an online version of the photo exhibit

More information about the exhibit in PDF format (260KB)

More information including photo exhibit, PDF format (1.1MB)

"Giving vulnerable people the right information at the right time is a form of empowerment. It enables people to make the decisions most appropriate for themselves and their families and can mean the difference between being a victim or a survivor."
Jonathan Walter, Editor, World Disasters Report, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies