Tag Archives: Save the Children

May 27, 2012 · 4:45 pm

This Memorial Day You Can Save a Life in Famine-Threatened West Africa

This Memorial Day is a time to remember lost loved ones. It’s also a time when people can rally to save the lives of millions of people threatened by starvation in the Sahel region of Africa.

A severe drought has ruined food supplies in this part of West Africa, which includes Niger, Mauritania, Mali, and five other countries. Conflict in Mali has created a refugee crisis; small children have already starved to death as a result of the food shortages. Aid agencies do not have enough resources to defeat the famine.

West Africa Faces Food Crisis (Australian Broadcasting Corporation video)

How can someone help? Do exactly what General John J. Pershing did after World War I. That war, in which he commanded American forces, produced a massive food shortage that threatened millions with starvation in Europe and other areas. Pershing co-hosted a fundraising dinner along with Herbert Hoover who ran American relief efforts during and after the war.

Description: New York City, Children's Relief Fund, 12/29/1920, Invisible Guest Dinner (Hoover Presidential Library and Museum photo)

A chair was placed at the table signifying an “invisible guest,” one of the hungry and suffering. Funds were collected at the dinners through the cost of the plate and also additional contributions. The money funded the work of the American Relief Administration overseas, the agency that led the fight against the other enemy of the World War I- Hunger.

Description: CRB, American Relief Administration Food Distribution, Poland, CA 1919 (Hoover Presidential Library and Museum photo)

Today, Memorial Day offers an opportunity for people to have their own “invisible guest” event. If it leads to a donation of even the cost of one Memorial Day cookout meal, it can save a life.

The director of the UN World Food Programme, Ertharin Cousin, says, “Time is not on our side. If no new food or cash contributions are received immediately, the resulting inability to pre-position and distribute enough food at the peak of the lean season, from June to September, would be catastrophic for the most vulnerable, food insecure people – especially women and children.”

Children being screened for their nutrition status at a supplementary feeding centre in Mauritania. (WFP/Jacqueline Seeley)

The UN World Food Programme has started a relief fund where people can donate to the Sahel relief effort. Save the Children also has its own Sahel relief fund. Both offer great opportunities to feed an “invisible guest” this Memorial Day.

If the donations come in, children will be saved from starvation in the Sahel region of Africa.(WFP/Rein Skullerud)

Article first published as This Memorial Day You Can Save a Life In Famine-Threatened West Africa on Blogcritics.

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May 21, 2012 · 1:46 am

Famine in Niger: Silent Guest Donations Needed to Feed Starving Children

Children are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition in Niger. Many will lose their lives unless the world responds. (Save the Children UK photo.)

Iris Gabriel, who once aspired to be an actress, played her most important role as a humanitarian. She proposed an idea to Massachusetts Governor Robert Bradford for Thanksgiving of 1947. Why not ask everyone hosting a Thanksgiving dinner to take in a “silent guest,” one of the world’s starving people?

People would then send a donation to feed the silent guest. The plan took off, with Bradford’s support, and it led to the purchase of thousands of CARE packages forwarded to the hungry in Europe. The program continued well past Thanksgiving too.

Today, the “silent guest” heroics are needed again as famine threatens. Children are starving to death in Niger and other countries in the Sahel region of West Africa. Severe drought and conflict have led to food shortages. If we respond now, we can save many lives. But aid agencies are lacking funding and the world is slow to turn its attention to this crisis.

If everyone will take the initiative, we can stop the tragedy. I just made a “silent guest” donation to Save the Children’s West Africa relief fund. If everyone did this at their next meal, it could help Save the Children’s relief work in Niger and the other Sahel countries.

Do not wait for the G8 to take action. Show them how to take action. Tonight at dinner imagine having one of the children in Niger as your guest. You could change a life by making a silent guest donation. Even a few dollars can buy a number of servings of the life-saving food Plumpy’nut.

Read this article by Annie Bodmer-Roy of Save the Children as she tell us about the tragedy taking place in Niger.

The Silent Guest reminds us of what is the right thing to do for humanity and building lasting peace. I think Americans can respond like this again and save lives.

You can help Save the Children’s West Africa Emergency Fund.

Article first published as Famine in Niger: Silent Guest Donations Needed to Feed Starving Children on Blogcritics.

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February 13, 2012 · 3:53 am

Save the Children Starts School Meals for Somali Refugees

Scene from a refugee camp in Ethiopia where Somalis fled to when food supplies ran out in their homeland. What future do these children face? (WFP/Natasha Scripture)

Imagine if you were a child living in the Gebo and Bay regions of Somalia last summer. Instead of having the opportunity to go to school in the fall you were trapped in a massive drought zone. With food supplies low your family would be forced to flee the region as a matter of survival.

Starting in the summer of 2011 streams of hungry Somalis fled Gebo, Bay and other crisis areas. Some parts of Southern Somalia were declared in famine as starvation had set in. The drought, combined with conflict, placed over 13 million people were put at risk of starvation in Somalia and other countries in East Africa.

Thousands of residents of Gebo and Bay are now in the Kobe and Hilaweyn refugee camps in Ethiopia and depending on relief from aid agencies. Save the Children is helping kids within these camps by providing emergency education and school meals. The meal will be a porridge, made of a corn-soy blend, served as a breakfast at school.

In addition Save the Children wants to provide school meals to children in the Melkadida and Bokolmayo camps, also in Ethiopia.

Save the Children hopes to provide meals to 8,037 children who are currently receiving emergency education in these four refugee camps.  And they want to expand the program to reach more children. There are 43,966 school age children in the four camps.

Save the Children is also working on the construction of schools to expand educational opportunities.

The school meal program, with supplies from the UN World Food Programme, will improve child nutrition. It’s also expected to improve enrollment and enhance the teaching and learning process.

Funding though is critical. Save the Children says resources for the program is expected to run out later this year. That is where the public can help by supporting Save the Children’s East Africa appeal.

Article first published as Save the Children Starts School Meals for Somali Refugees on Blogcritics.

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November 16, 2011 · 4:35 am

Save the Children Issues Appeal for Flood Ravaged Thailand

Flooding in Don Meung, one of the northern suburbs of Bangkok which has been hard hit by Thailand's worst flooding in five decades, has killed at least 356 people and affected nearly 2.5 million.

Save the Children has issued an appeal for 5 million dollars to help with flood relief efforts in Thailand. The charity estimates that about 800,000 children are in need of assistance as massive floods have struck the country.

Thousands of people have been forced from their homes into crowded evacuation centers. Thousands of others though remained trapped in their homes and are depending on aid agencies to reach them with food, clean water, medicine and other supplies.

The floodwaters bring grave danger. Annie Bodmer-Roy of Save the Children warns, “The water is filthy, and there is a very real risk of waterborne or communicable diseases such as diarrhea and skin infections taking hold if families can’t maintain basic standards of hygiene. It is essential that the risks facing children in this crisis are understood and steps taken to keep them safe.”

Save the Children has been making deliveries of life-saving supplies to those trapped by the floods. They are also helping children in the evacuation centers.

Save the Children’s appeal states, “We need donations to help us delivering aid (including food, water, and non-food items such as diapers, sleeping mats, mosquito nets and hygiene supplies) and keep children safe by organizing child friendly spaces for them to play and learn.”

The flooding has destroyed livelihoods and hunger and poverty will threaten many for months to come. Aid will be needed to help thousands who will suffer without an income and will struggle to afford basic necessities.

You can donate at Save the Children’s web site.

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November 7, 2011 · 12:39 am

Budget Debates in Congress Loom Over Yemen Crisis

Budget decisions made by the U.S. Congress in the coming weeks will have their effect on Yemen. Proposals for reducing international food aid would limit the U.S. ability to respond to the humanitarian crisis escalating in Yemen, already the poorest country in the Middle East.

Congress has proposed reducing funding for the U.S. Food for Peace plan, which in 2011 supported the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) relief operation in Sana’a City and Northern Yemen. In addition, Food for Peace funded Save the Children’s voucher initiative, also in the North. This program showed promising results and if enough funding were available could be continued and expanded.

Currently, the UN World Food Programme and UNICEF are facing funding shortages for their relief programs in Yemen. The prospect of the U.S. decreasing its food aid budget is a forerunner of disaster for an already distressed humanitarian operation.

Before this year’s political unrest and violence unfolded, Yemen was already suffering a humanitarian crisis with high rates of child malnutrition. The year’s events have made this situation worse with prices of food and other basic goods on the increase. Food is becoming out of reach.

UNICEF recently reported “food security & nutrition indicators continue to be alarmingly low. Protein intake continues to decline, with increasing numbers of households reporting no consumption of meat (74.2%), fish (65.0%), chicken (34.2%), and eggs (43.3%).”

UNICEF, which surveys households in the Sana’a, Amran, and Hodeida governorates, highlights the alarming child malnutrition crisis. UNICEF says, “More households reported decreased number of meals among children <5yrs (33.6%) compared with the previous round (22.6%), with children in rural households being the most vulnerable to meal reduction (40.4%) compared with urban households (28.6%).”

The World Food Program USA is rallying support for increasing U.S. international food aid so there can be a stronger response for the crisis in Yemen and other countries.

WFP USA states, “Despite the fact that cuts to these critically important international programs cannot possibly make a meaningful contribution to reducing the debt or balancing the budget, unfortunately they are under threat this week as the Senate debates International Affairs accounts.”

A take action page has been set up to help citizens contact their representatives in Congress to oppose the budget cuts to international food aid.

Article first published as Budget Debates in Congress Loom over Yemen Crisis at Blogcritics.

 

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October 31, 2011 · 4:18 am

On Halloween Remember the World’s Hungry

This Halloween please remember the world's hungry (photo courtesy USA.gov)

It’s Halloween 2011 and time for the Wolfman, Dracula, and other monsters and ghosts to have their one night of the year. And let’s not forget Egypt’s famous Halloween contribution, the Mummy, and a couple of creatures that have appeared in this column when they helped with fundraisers, the Mothman and the Yeti.

Halloween means lots of candy too! In fact billions of dollars are spent on Halloween festivities. But this year please take a silent guest with you when trick or treating, or at your Halloween party. You can help one of the world’s nearly one billion hungry who on Halloween, or any other day, will hope to get maybe one meal if they are lucky.

There are many ways that Halloween can be combined with fighting hunger. In fact, in 1947 students used Halloween not to collect treats but to collect canned goods for the Friendship Train that fed the hungry in war-torn Europe.

On Halloween night, maybe in place of one of the treats, you could ask for a dollar to buy a week’s worth of meals for a hungry child. You can send the dollar to food aid agencies like the World Food Programme, Save the Children, Feeding America, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services and others.

Or perhaps take a few minutes after coming home from trick or treating to play a few rounds of the online game Free Rice. For every correct answer you get, rice is donated to the hungry in developing countries.

There are many ways you can combine Halloween and fighting hunger. For this night is one of imagination. So the best ideas are to come: from you.

Article first published as On Halloween Remember the World’s Hungry on Blogcritics.

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October 22, 2011 · 3:10 am

Is Anyone Paying Attention to Food Shortages in Afghanistan?

This a file photo of a girl during class in an accelerated learning center in Balkh Province in Northern Afghanistan. The province she lives in has now been struck by massive drought which is causing severe food shortages. The UN says the Balkh Province has one of the highest rates of "severe food insecurity." (Photo: Mats Lignell / Save the Children)

As drought and food shortages have struck Afghanistan, there are alarming reports of child malnutrition. A survey by the charity Oxfam Novib in two drought-affected provinces (Faryab and Saripul) showed global acute malnutrition (GAM) in nearly 14 percent of small children. The global emergency threshold number is 15 percent.

A study by the aid agency Medair showed GAM rates of 30 percent for children 6-59 months in the Badakhshan Province in northeast Afghanistan.  This is a high number of children threatened with such poor nutrition that they face lasting physical and mental damage.

The charity Save the Children is taking action by helping community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) in drought-ravaged northern Afghanistan. This includes providing the miracle peanut paste Plumpy’nut to save small children from the potentially deadly effect of malnutrition. Funding will be crucial to Save the Children so it can carry out this work.

Save the Children is also starting a cash-for-work program in Faryab and Saripul to help families struggling with high food prices and unemployment. The U.S. Food for Peace program is sponsoring this initiative. It could not come at a more critical time.

The United Nations says: “The drought has added burden to an already volatile and impoverished country with considerable challenges and unacceptably high rates of malnutrition.” The UN just issued an appeal for $142 million for drought relief. Even before this disaster began to strike, the UN was low on funding for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.

The drought and resulting food shortages place even further strain on an already weakened country. The United Nations reports that “even in normal times Afghanistan has high malnutrition rates with 59% and 9% of under five (U5) children being stunted and wasted, respectively, and 72% of children 6-59 months, 48% of non-pregnant women and 18% of adult men being iron-deficient.”

This malnutrition rate among children is coupled with a lack of education. The UN states there is a “silent crisis of the 42% (5,000,000) children who are not in school due to poverty and vulnerability. More children will be affected by the drought.”

The country already has many street children who are forced to beg for food and other basics. The drought may very well increase the ranks of children forced into this kind of desperation.

What will come next, without robust intervention, will be a steady deterioration within Afghanistan. It is already under way. The charity CARE reports that in the provinces of Jawzjan and Balkh, 80 percent of farmland is unusable because of the drought. People are being forced from their homes in search of food and new jobs to support themselves.

World Vision, working in Ghor and Badghis provinces, finds that “the drought has already severely affected households in these regions where many water sources are running out, children started to get small jobs instead of going to school to improve their family income, while some households started to sell their assets to buy food.”

When food safety nets are not in place, one thing leads to another. Families get forced into desperate actions. If they sell assets to get food today, it also means fewer resources for their livelihood tomorrow. Children may drop out of school and thus sacrifice their future. This is what is happening in Afghanistan. When funding is low for aid agencies, it means there is nothing for the poor to fall back on.

The UN World Food Programme, for instance, had to severely cut back its school meals program because of low funding from the international community. So that is one less safety net in place.

The international community will need to act quickly to support aid agencies working to bring relief and long-term solution to Afghans.

The Afghan people will never be able to make progress if they are constantly fighting off one shock after another. It’s not until there is solid respite from shocks that real development can take place. This all starts in the area of food and nutrition. For without healthy children, there is no road to peace and progress in Afghanistan.

Article first published as Is Anyone Paying Attention to Food Shortages in Afghanistan? on Blogcritics.

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October 19, 2011 · 3:13 am

Thailand: Children Desperately Need Help as Massive Floods Strike

This summer I interviewed Save the Children’s Annie Bodmer-Roy about the post-conflict recovery in the Ivory Coast. She is now in Thailand helping children who are suffering from the massive flooding that just struck there. Hundreds have lost their lives in the floods.  Damage, which includes farming areas,  is estimated in the billions of dollars.

Save the Children is distributing food in Thailand and setting up child-friendly spaces.  The psychological toll of going through a disaster  is hard enough at any age. For children the trauma is magnified. Amid the chaos of the flooding it is also tragically easy for children to get separated from their parents. Save the Children is working to prevent this and help keep families together.

Bodmer-Roy says, “The main challenge we face today is the lack of funds for the floods response. Government capacity is stretched as flood-waters continue to rise, now ever closer to Bangkok, and children desperately need help. We need more funds to help these kids and right now we’re struggling to get the resources we need.”

To learn more about this fast developing crisis read Annie Bodmer-Roy’s post at Save the Children UK.

 

 

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October 10, 2011 · 3:32 am

Japan’s Generosity-6 months after the earthquake

Japan has long been a major donor to the UN World Food Programme. Here is a photo of 2009 meeting announcing a donation to WFP operations in Tajikistan (WFP/Zia Ziauddin)

While Japan has faced enormous challenges since the earthquake struck one thing has not changed-their generosity. Japan continues to be a leader in fighting global hunger as evidenced by a recent donation to the UN World Food Programme. Around 400,000 impoverished families in Bangladesh will benefit from a September donation of 10 million dollars.

H.E. Mr. Tamotsu Shintosuka, Ambassador to Bangladesh says, “We hope the assistance will help poor people of Bangladesh who are the victims of natural disasters and climate change. We are pleased to assist WFP with this donation to help the poorest, most vulnerable and undernourished people of the country.”

Japan continues to reach out to help others countries just as they are rebuilding on the homefront. The charity Save the Children is in Japan providing relief supplies and helping kids deal with the trauma of the last 6 months. One mother remarked to Save the Children staff, “You have made my child smile again.”

Read an article in the Korea Times about Japan’s recovery and Save the Children’s work there.

Listen below to an audio message from Save the Children’s president Carolyn Miles.

Save the Children Reports from Japan- 6 Months after the Earthquake

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