Children in Kenya, Ethiopia Need Your Help
Drought Grips Horn of Africa
- Drought News
- Horn of Africa Drought Updates
ChildFund.org
Field staff, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda - Children Starve in the Horn of Africa
Richmond Times Dispatch
Isam Ghanim, Executive Vice President of Programs for ChildFund International - Helping Children Survive East Africa Drought
Voice of America
Victor Koyi, Kenya National Director - Citizens of the World: Respond to the Horn of Africa’s Call
ChildFund Blog
Victor Koyi, Kenya National Director - Desperate Families Sell the Roofs Over Their Heads for Food
ChildFund.org
ChildFund Ethiopia
The rains have failed the people of the Horn of Africa, and their children are dying.
The worst drought in 60 years has put 12.4 million people in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia at risk, according to the U.N. — and the youngest suffer the most.
Exhausted, hungry families carry their starving children miles through the parched landscape in search of water and food. Sometimes a child dies in a mother’s arms — of malnutrition, of waterborne illness, of measles … the final diagnosis doesn’t matter. It is because the rains failed.
Sometimes the mother’s cry is too weak for anyone to hear.
It’s the sad end of a story that begins with crops having dried up. With no food to eat or sell, families then sell their meager belongings. And when those are gone — with nothing else to stay for — they sell the corrugated metal roofs off their houses.
It’s about survival now.
—ChildFund President and CEO
Anne Lynam Goddard
And then they walk in search of food and water.
“It’s about survival now,” says ChildFund President and CEO Anne Lynam Goddard.
That’s why ChildFund needs your help — quickly. ChildFund is on the ground working directly with our partners to provide food and water to save the lives of the children most affected and their families.
“The under-5 children and lactating mothers are the worst affected, and the little available food is running out fast!” says David Kang’ethe, ChildFund’s sponsor relations and communications director for Kenya, who has been in Turkana meeting with families and seeing their struggle firsthand.
ChildFund’s efforts are trained squarely on those groups, says Victor Koyi, national director of ChildFund Kenya, “because of the vulnerability of this age group and the lifelong implications of inadequate food intake at this stage.”
Food insecurity is expected to reach crisis levels in September in Kenya’s north and northeastern districts, with no likelihood of the situation improving until 2012. In Ethiopia, the prolonged La Niña conditions have affected two consecutive rainy seasons, causing rapidly deteriorating food security in the drought-affected lowlands of south and southeastern Ethiopia, and in parts of the central and southern highlands.
In addition to providing food and water, ChildFund is also working to keep families and children in their communities. “We don’t want these vulnerable children and their families to have to move away,” says Goddard. “We know how detrimental that is to their development.”
ChildFund is helping from many angles — but the greatest challenge of all is funding these efforts. We must not fail the children of the Horn of Africa. Make a difference now and help ChildFund help them.
> Your $50 donation will provide 40 children with a serving of nutritious porridge.
> Your $35 donation will provide 57 rehydration treatments for malnourished children.
DON'T FORGET: Your donations could be doubled and do twice as much good for children in our care if your employer is one of the thousands of companies that offer a matching gift program.