Travelling along the bumpy dirt road out to the villages of Siraro district in Ethiopia, the first thing you notice is how beautiful the landscape is – rolling fields dotted with grass-roofed mud huts, pairs of oxen moving slowly side by side ploughing fields and passing donkeys transporting bundles of firewood and jerry cans of water.
This is one of Ethiopia’s most drought-prone areas, yet there has been some rain in the weeks before our visit so it’s greener than I expect. I’m also surprised at how peaceful it is – just like being in the countryside at home.
The other massive challenge here is the changing weather patterns. In Siraro, families are struggling to survive in a vicious cycle of flood and drought. Drought once came every 10 years, now it’s more like every one to two years. When the rains do come, they are erratic or too late. This is causing havoc for farming communities who survive on what they grow – when nothing grows, people don’t survive.
This is why ChildFund has been providing emergency food aid, water and medical care in Siraro, as part of our response to last year’s drought across the Horn of Africa. While the situation has stabilised, ChildFund’s support continues to ensure children are nourished and cared for during this critical time in their development. Rations of Famix (a nutritious porridge mix) and edible oil are being distributed to the most vulnerable families on a monthly basis.
However, while food aid supports you to survive, it can’t save your assets or livelihood. Longer-term solutions, such as drilling wells, installing rainwater cisterns, constructing grain storage tanks, diversifying people’s skills and incomes, and encouraging a savings culture, are also necessary to reduce the impact of future droughts. With ChildFund supporting all of these activities in Siraro, I left feeling hopeful that things are heading in the right direction.
The Stop Kony campaign has garnered worldwide attention over the past week. If you haven’t already watched the video, you can do so at the end of this post.
Uganda is once again in the news, and the focus is on children. Overall, that’s a good thing. There can never be enough attention heaped on this nation’s children, who endured 20 years of civil war from the 1980s to the mid-2000s. Yet, it’s important to distinguish between the Uganda of the early years of this century and the Uganda of today.
It is estimated that as many as 26,000 children in northern and eastern Uganda were abducted, raped and forced into servitude and military combat during the war. During the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) crisis, ChildFund responded with programs in some of the worst-affected districts of Pader, Gulu, Lira and Soroti in northern Uganda. We provided child protection and psychosocial support to thousands of children in the large camps of internally displaced people (IDPs).
Joseph Kony, who led the LRA, fled the country. Widely believed to now be in hiding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kony remains a wanted man for the terrible atrocities committed on Uganda’s people and its children. And he continues to exploit children who come into his reach in central Africa.
“In the early years following the crisis, ChildFund Uganda focused on reintegrating formerly abducted children with their families and communities, as well as promoting the protection and psychosocial wellbeing of many other children who were not abducted but still were affected by the crisis,” says Martin Hayes, child protection specialist at ChildFund International. “By 2006, the northern Ugandan city of Gulu no longer had Ônight commuters’Ñ children on the run from the LRA abductors and who were afraid to sleep in their own rural homes. Today, Gulu is a bustling town.”
The last 10 years have also seen the return of tens of thousands of the IDPs from camps back to their homes and a gradual return to normalcy. “ChildFund’s work has shifted to helping the Ugandan people get on with their lives,” Hayes says. “We’re working with our community partners to promote children and youth’s protection and healthy development – tangible support that is making their lives better.”
Since 1980, ChildFund has worked with community-based partners across Uganda to support the needs of children. ChildFund’s programs currently benefit approximately 784,000 children and family members through the establishment of Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres and parental outreach programs, school construction and teacher training, youth leadership and job training. “We also have been working with communities and families to support the needs of children affected by HIV/AIDS, which is a tremendous problem in Uganda,” Hayes notes.
“Child protection is at the forefront of all of our programs,” says Hayes. “ChildFund is working closely in partnership with the Ugandan government, the national university, international and national organisations and community residents to collectively improve the protective environments for children. Together, our goal is to strengthen Uganda’s national child protection system.”
