Hunger Relief for Africa's Children
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| Food and supplies arrive at a distribution center in Kajiado, Kenya. |
This year, erratic rainfall and plagues of locusts have destroyed essential crops across the region, worsening a critical food situation for millions of children and families. Current conditions are weakening children already vulnerable due to poverty, environmental issues and the HIV/AIDS crisis.
With over two decades of experience in food programs in Africa, Save the Children is working to save lives and restore nutritional health for children in the region. Learn more about what we are doing in Africa:
Ethiopia
Save the Children is already leading nutrition and health programs in the affected regions. Some 4,000 children benefit from our nutritional programs, the centerpiece of which is a Community-based Therapeutic Care program. This program targets severely malnourished children with other health complications so that they receive in-patient feeding and medical treatment. Other severely malnourished children without complications are treated at home. This strategy has enabled us to reach many more children than with traditional feeding programs.
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A boy receives food at a Save the Children food distribution center in Kenya. |
Kenya
Save the Children – Canada, working to address poverty and HIV/AIDS in Kenya since 1984, is leading the call to begin delivering food, water and health services immediately to three districts devastated by the drought: Isiolo, Kajiado and South Tharaka.
The program will include age-appropriate food for 35,500 children under age 5, water provision to needy primary schools in Isiolo and Kajiado, rehabilitation of water holes that service schools and their communities, and improved health care for severely and moderately malnourished children, including provisions of therapeutic milk and hospital equipment.
Somalia
Currently, there are 850,000 children that are affected by the drought in Somalia. Save the Children is working in the Hiran region of central and southern Somalia, Togdheer in Somaliland, and Puntland, in north-east Somalia to provide food water and sanitation, basic primary education and basic health services to the children most at risk.
Malawi
Save the Children will distribute 463 tons of corn, corn-soy blend and ready-to-use therapeutic food to nearly 4,000 families, of whom 2,270 are directly affected by HIV/AIDS. We are planning to sustain this relief through monthly food distributions.
Mali
Save the Children has used its limited funds to provide food commodities to some 3,800 families in the communes where no other international aid organization is working. We helped to distribute 88 tons of corn meal, 88 tons of beans and 44 tons of cooking oil. Save the Children is now cooperating with the UN’s World Food Program to continue food relief for the next three months.
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| School children cultivate fields of maize and green beans as a learning activity and food source as well as a source of funds for the school fund. Save the Children sponsors the agricultural activities by providing seeds, tools and training. |
Mozambique
Save the Children’s experienced field staff in Mozambique’s Gaza district, where the drought has been extreme, are currently assessing conditions affecting children. We anticipate our initial approach will be partnerships with the World Food Program and the local governments in Gaza. These partnerships will focus on starting and then sustaining school feeding programs for children, the distribution of seeds to farming families who lost crops, and other immediate and long-term hunger relief activities for which we have experienced staff in the country.
Niger
In response, Save the Children established a new emergency relief presence in Niger, quickly organizing and launching supplementary and therapeutic feeding and related healthcare activities for children. Working with our Save the Children UK colleagues, we are now reaching some 3,000 severely and moderately malnourished girls and boys under age 5 through a Community-based Therapeutic Care program for severely malnourished children and a supplementary feeding program that provides extra food to treat children with moderate malnutrition. To date, we also have screened some 17,600 children for signs of moderate or severe malnutrition.
Zimbabwe
Working with Save the Children UK, we are well positioned to respond, based on more than two decades of experience in supplemental feeding programs for children in Zimbabwe and our work in education, nutrition, child protection and HIV/AIDS in Kadoma District.
