WFP - E-Card

E-card

LONG-STANDING WFP DONOR VISITS PROJECTS IN ETHIOPIA

Matt Peek, an American from Atlanta in Georgia, has been donating on average US$20 to WFP every month since 1991. He recently left the United States for the first time to visit Ethiopia, where he saw WFP School Feeding and Food for Work projects. He sent this e-card in which he describes his experiences.

Addis Ababa is very beautiful. The city is ringed by green mountains and high plateaus, which look splendid in the bright Ethiopian sunshine. More than 2,000 metres above sea-level, it has many tall buildings to match its high altitude.

The streets are congested with cars, many of them the blue-and-white Ladas which serve as taxis. There are a lot of people on the streets, some of them herding groups of donkeys, sheep or other livestock. The animals walk aimlessly ahead of their keepers, apparently unaware of the traffic.

People industriously conduct business on the sidewalks, trying to make a living any way they can. There are many homeless people on the streets, half of them children. They seem so small, so young… so vulnerable. Some of them look no more than six years of age, and may well be even younger.

ETHIOPIAN FRIENDS

I was fortunate enough to visit the country with a very good Ethiopian friend from Atlanta, where there is a large Ethiopian diaspora. In Addis Ababa I stayed at my friend’s mother’s house, which resembled a middle-class home in suburban America.

WFP invited me to visit some of their project sites and warehouses in and around the capital. My first trip was to a project 100 km from the city.

We drove up the side of a mountain in a four-by-four vehicle, the views of Addis Ababa growing more and more spectacular as we climbed. We passed country people walking to the city, their bodies bent double under the enormous loads of wood they carried on their backs to sell at the market.

HOW I HEARD ABOUT WFP

You don’t have to be rich to donate money to something you believe in. Every contribution counts. I have never had much money to speak of, but have always felt that I’ve had enough for my needs.

The thing about hunger is that it has a cure. In the twenty-first century, there are no excuses for the death of an individual through hunger. It takes on average just 19 cents a day to feed a child in the developing world. 19 cents! How much cheaper is that than treating the cost of a hunger-related illness?

By donating a very small sum of money to WFP each month, I really feel that I am not only helping a few individuals, I am helping those individuals whom I have helped to help others. The effect is cumulative.

LUSH GREEN LANDSCAPE

Outside the city, most of the houses are beautifully and carefully constructed from grass. There is lush, green landscape in every direction, as far as the eye can see. The vegetation is not thick like in a jungle, but soft and undulating, lying in folds and rolls.

We drove on a paved road for 85km. The road was well constructed and I did not see a single pot-hole. The traffic was light and we met other cars infrequently – quite a contrast to Addis Ababa.

Then we drove onto a dirt road, and finally onto a grass field. We continued through the field for several kilometres until we approached the WFP site. Several well-maintained buildings were grouped together, surrounded by a fence and monitored by an armed guard. It was a school feeding project in Fitche, in central Ethiopia.

NO CHOICE FOR CHILDREN

In developing countries, children often have no choice but to work instead of going to school. These children are unable to secure good jobs as adults, and their children too will often have limited educational opportunities – the cycle of deprivation continues.

WFP gives food to children in exchange for attending school. It is a huge incentive for families to send their children to school, as by doing so they can guarantee that they will receive at least one hot, nutritious meal every day.

We arrived at the Fitche project at lunchtime, and the children were heartily eating their midday meal. There were roughly equal numbers of boys and girls, many hundreds of each, who all seemed alert and attentive and - equally important - very happy; they laughed and smiled a lot, and were curious about our presence.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION

The director of the school explained that community members are actively encouraged to participate in WFP School Feeding programmes.

Where they can, local communities supply resources for the schools such as firewood, or help with the construction of classrooms and kitchens, or they join school committees. Many schools also have vegetable gardens, providing an opportunity to generate income.

MOUNTAIN OF FOOD

My second trip to the field was to a city called Nazareth. I visited a warehouse where WFP kept food; more food than I had ever seen, or am ever likely to see again. Bags of donated food were stacked up into a mountain. I couldn’t guess how much there was, but there must have been many, many tonnes.

At the Food for Work project outside Nazareth, I was shown a large pond which had been dug deep into the ground by members of the community, in exchange for food from WFP.

This was very impressive. Before, the residents had to walk for six hours to collect water. The people I saw were justifiably proud of their achievement.

I was also shown land which WFP and the Ethiopian government had worked together to conserve. The residents now use this protected land to generate income. Without WFP and government intervention, the land would have been useless.

FROM:
Matt Peek
Donor
Ethiopia

Ethiopia context

A UN report issued in January found that Ethiopia is enjoying a bumper harvest from the 2004 main season, projected to be more than 24 percent above the previous year's revised estimate of 11.49 million tonnes, and 21 percent above the average for the past five years.

However, the report noted that despite this strong performance, 2.2 million Ethiopians will need emergency assistance in 2005, and in addition, five million people suffering from chronic hunger will receive cash and food transfers under a new safety net programme.

The report voiced concern about pastoral areas in eastern and southern Ethiopia where prolonged drought had led to acute water and fodder shortages. Erratic and poorly distributed rains had also affected some central and northern parts of the country, reducing crop yields, it said.

These areas, which already had large numbers of vulnerable people, were expected to face increased food insecurity.

The report estimated emergency food requirements for 2005 at 387,500 tonnes. In addition, 89,000 tonnes of fortified blended food and vegetable oil is required for targeted supplementary food distributions for a survival programme for children under five and pregnant and lactating women.

This compares with relief food requirements in 2004 of 965,000 tonnes. A total of seven million people needed food assistance in Ethiopia in 2004.

The 2005 humanitarian appeal for Ethiopia requested support for 2.2 million acutely food-insecure people who will need emergency food assistance, while five million chronically food-insecure people will receive cash and food transfers under a Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), which tackles longer-term food security needs.

WFP will distribute food to affected communities in exchange for their undertaking development activities, such as land rehabilitation and water and soil conservation initiatives.

Agriculture is the main economic activity in Ethiopia, contributing to 45 percent of GDP with some 80 percent of the population earning a living directly or indirectly from agricultural activities.

The near total dependence of the agriculture sector on rainfall makes it susceptible to the vagaries of nature and results in high variability of yearly agricultural production. This in turn increases the uncertainty and insecurity of food production, the joint UN report said.