REI Corporate would like to welcome Ken Gray and David Lyons to its 2012 Board of Directors.

Last week, the REI home team received the startling news from our staff that Djibouti, like most countries in the Middle East, was beginning to experience pangs of uprising. With presidential elections on the horizon (set for April), the political climate had become tense in the region, with small protests erupting in Djibouti City’s suburbs. However, we had heard that all of our staff were still safe and that they weren’t concerned that their safety would be threatened.

On Saturday, we received a report from staff that Djibouti has calmed. There had been rumors that strikes would come from last Saturday (February 19) through Friday (February 25), but they remained rumors and none of the strikes occurred.

...Read more on REI's blog!

Amidst all the turmoil in the Middle East, our staff in Africa have been holding their breath to see how it affects the countries where they live and work. Our staff in Djibouti, up to this point, have not been impacted by the protests in other countries, but just this past Friday, the REI home team received an email giving us a new update on protests in Djibouti. Read more from our staff members!

In the past two weeks, it would have been hard to avoid hearing of the unrest that is currently occurring in Egypt. The protests calling for President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation began on January 25. Cairo’s poverty was one of the main instigators for the protests, along with complaints about rising food prices, social exclusion, anger over corruption within the President’s National Democratic Party, and difficulty in finding jobs for many young people.

REI's CEO reports on his second around the world adventure, during which a 3-year agreement was signed with officials in Laos. This week, read about this exciting step forward in his own words.

After many hours of working with a web developer, staff members, and copy-editors, REI-Vietnam has finally completed the renovations on their new website.

On Thursday, October 28, 2010, Mount Merapi erupted, spewing hot gas and debris that killed 35 people. The eruptions continued into Friday, forcing 50,000 people to stay in temporary camps outside the radius of the blast. Those in the camps couldn’t even use the water to clean the food because it was so full of dust.

REI’s President and CEO, Roderick Beidler, just returned last week from a round-the-world trip to visit REI staff. He was joined by REI’s Regional President for East Africa and the Middle East, Rick Heupel, and together they visited REI’s staff in Djibouti, Egypt, and Jordan—and boy, were they excited about what they saw.In Roderick’s words, “Nothing substitutes for being there!”

For an update on Hieu's progress (the little boy we talked about in the last post), please follow this link to read an article about his first steps in Minneapolis.

Dr. Craig Johnson, a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA and his daughter traveled to Vietnam last November with REI's Pediatric Team as volunteers. In a most remarkable "coincidence," on this trip Dr. Johnson met Dr. Nhat, the head of Orthopedics at Hue Central Hospital.

Dr. Nhat remembered Dr. Johnson from a special training program in the USA they both had received a couple of decades ago, and a budding friendship emerged. Soon Dr. Johnson became aware of a special case confronting Dr. Nhat – a young boy born without a left femur. This young boy made such an impression on Dr. Johnson and his teenage daughter that they returned to the USA determined to do something about the situation...