Goats and Donkeys Transform Lives in Darfur

Mothers in Darfur have begged us for Kindergartens in their villages.  They know that education is the way out of poverty but schools are often miles away across the desert.    Many children walk 2 to 3 hours to get to school.  Some stay with relatives in distant villages. It is just too far to walk home again.   There are no roads.   The only transport is a donkey, but a donkey costs more than twice a family's annual income.   If only children could have a donkey they would be able to go to school.  They could collect more water.   They could help plough more land with the help of our donkey ploughs.  Donkeys are more than the 4 x 4 of Darfur, they are what makes life possible. That is where Kids for Kids is able to help.   Thanks to you we provided donkeys for the poorest families in four villages just before Christmas.   Those donkeys are busy transforming the lives of their families.   To be given a donkey is to be given a new life, to be freed just a little from the drudgery which is life in the remote villages.

But that is not all we do.   For 16 years Kids for Kids has been lending goats so that children have goat's milk.   Babies whose mothers cannot feed them, have milk to drink.   Children who are malnourished wake up to a cup of milk each day.  Mothers have a supplementary income they can rely on - and after two years they pass on offspring to another family.   And, over time, the health of the entire village is improved.   As you read this, new little goats will be walking into a village in the centre of Africa and bringing smiles to the faces of the children.    Every week the Kids for Kids Children's Shepherds' Committees check all the goats and donkeys.   In Dor Fazy, a village we adopted in 2014, last month the children checked 462 goats.    Already there are 306 kids.  "It is a great responsibility to check the Kids for Kids goats" said Hamid who is 11 and who is Chairman of the Shepherds' Committee in Dor Fazy.  "If we see a goat that won't get up we report it to the paravet who will make it better.   None of the animals has died in our village since Kids for Kids provided veterinary care for us and taught us how to look after the animals."

With your help we have trained two paravets in each of the villages we adopted last year, provided training in animal care and given the beneficiaries things like salt licks to keep the goats healthy.  "It's essential to make sure the animals are well looked after" explains Dr Salim, Programme Manager for Kids for Kids. "Darfur is a tough environment, both for humans and for animals, but if the animals are healthy then they will help keep the children healthy too."

Links:

• Find out why the gift of a goat or donkey means so much

A CHANCE YOUR DONATION TO BE MATCHED

In case you are considering one more contribution this year and you are donating from the US, please remember TOMORROW, Tuesday, November 29th is Giving Tuesday.  (Perhaps set an alarm on your phone!)  Donations are being matched by the Gates Foundation …and you can multiple your kindness. But please donate early on November 29th to qualify – it will mean more clean water, more goats, more good in the world.

With the flash floods having wiped out crops early last summer and the drought before that reducing goat herds, we have been hard at work getting more seed and new little goats—kids—on their way to new and long-term Kids for Kids villages.  542 bags of seed are on their way; 942 new goats are headed to the worst hit villages. 

Fatima Daoud Jumaa lives in Lawabid, has six children and is a widow.  She had nothing to rely on and only a small patch of land.  Just two years of the Goat Loan her children were all at school, milk and yoghurt have become a guaranteed part of the family diet and her children are healthier.  Last month, she was able to buy notebooks and pencils for the first time, for them all.  She herself does not read or write, but she has been able to budget, and has also saved enough millet stalks for a second small hut, and a surrounding fence.

Thanks to our wonderful supporters, Kids for Kids’ Goat Loans work miracles, because rather than handing out food for one day at a time, these little creatures provide nutritious milk,  - the only source of protein for many children - and in time, once the flock has grown – the opportunity to earn an income for the family.  Mothers prioritise food, healthcare, education, so the family has real hope for a better future.  And remember, after 2 years the family that received their 6 goats passes on 6 little goats to another family, and the miracle starts all over again.

To give families (and our goats) the best possible chance, Kids for Kids does not stop at Goat Loans. In every village we adopt, we deliver a whole package of changes which we have developed in partnership with village leaders. This ranges from blankets, mosquito nets and food trays to keep food clean and keep weak children healthy, to longer term projects which create a sustainable food supply.   Joanna Lumley, star of ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ and Patron of Kids for Kids, said “a healthy animal means a healthy child” and of course we provide veterinary care by training paravets, providing veterinary drugs and teaching beneficiaries how to look after their animals.

As one little shepherd told us “We were all so hungry. My baby sister was very weak, and I was afraid for her. Now that we have goat’s milk she is full of life again.  I always check our goats every day to make sure they stay healthy and keep giving us milk”.  This is real, meaningful change, and it saves lives.  Our tree planting, farm tools and seed grain, donkey ploughs, water projects, latrines and training are all designed to help entire villages become self-sufficient. 

And don’t forget, your donation will grow by 50% on 29^th thanks to The Gates Foundation. 

Quote - Patricia Parker MBE

It has been an extremely difficult year in Darfur, with violence the worst we have known it, followed by a severe drought in the wake of El Nino. When hay has run out, there is nothing for them to eat, and the grass was so poor at the end of last year that families could not collect sufficient to last them through the 'hungry' months - months when humans and animals succumb to starvation. 

To prevent this, we asked you to help provide emergency  fodder for the animals in the worst affected areas.  Thanks to everyone who helped us we made a real difference, and now at last there is grass again as the rains started early.  

After such a hard summer when people walked miles for water for themselves and their animals it was wonderful to hear that at last there was water near at hand.   Poeple rushed to the fields to plant their crops, from the seed they had managed to save so their families could eat next year.   Tragically, the rains did not stop.    Terrible downpours caused massive flash flooding.   This photograph shows the floods at Um Ga’al, our first village, in the far north of Darfur. 

“It is so surprising seeing this rush of water" said Patricia Parker our Founder who started Kids for Kids when she saw small children struggling across what was desert to fetch every drop of water.  " I have only seen Um Ga’al when the region is only arid desert as far as you can see.  The floods this year in Um Ga’al have resulted not only in goats and sheep being drowned but has washed away an entire side of a valley where people had planted their valuable seed.  Without Kids for Kids there would be no help for those families who have lost their crops.  When your only food is from what you grow, this is disaster.  It is hard to think of families facing starvation when predictions are that, because of the rain, 2017 is likely to be the best harvest for a decade in Sudan as a whole.  The families that have lost their animals have lost more than a year's income.  It is disaster.   We are setting up a disaster fund for Um Ga’al and other villages facing the same loss to make sure they have something to get them through next year.”

But it is not all disaster.  Darfur is the size of France, further south our villages are doing well.   Thankfully now the rains have come, the grass is starting to grow, and soon our goat loan animals will be recovering and reproducing!    We need many more goats so that children will drink milk again.   Thank you for your support.   The goats and donkeys you are helping us provide are changing children's lives forever.

Please help us to keep goats and donkeys healthy, to help maintain starving children

$25 buys seed for 2 families

$30 buys a donkey plough to help a family grow more food

$62 will provide one goat to give children nutritious milk

$75 buys 20 fruit tree seedlings to provide food and shade for the animals and families

$95 buys a donkey for transport and to help carry water

$600 pays for a paravet, as there is no veterinary care to look after the animals

$372 will provide 6 goats for a family to give them milk and income from selling excess dairy product.

$7,000 will provide a simple handpump for the whole community, so that children won’t have to walk miles for fresh clean water.

Thank you so much for your support.

Links:

• Kids for Kids Website

Emergency fodder saving lives in 2016

As you know, this is the time of year when I am working with my team in Darfur on new projects, and this year there are more challenges than usual because of the devastating drought and a wave of people who have lost everything because of the continuing violence.  

I am pleased to tell you that I have just signed off an emergency project to deliver supplementary fodder to 523 families in 11 villages in Darfur, to make sure that our Kids for Kids goats and donkeys survive this summer.  From experience we know that if a family's animals look thin, the children are hungry too, but the reverse is also true - a healthy donkey means healthy children!  Darfur families receive animal husbandry traning from us before they receive any animals, and they take good care of them, so if they are doing well, their animals are nice and plump too.  

"The pilot project was a success last year" says our Programme Manager in Darfur, Dr Salim. (one of the few veterinary doctors in Darfur)  "Those animals that received the extra fodder thrived despite difficult conditions and many goats had twin kids.  We are very happy to extend this project this year to help 11 villages to keep their livestock healthy."  

Please will you help us to keep helping families with goats and donkeys this year?  A cup of goat's milk is the difference beween life and death for a little child in Darfur with no other source of protein,  Without protein, children's bones, teeth and even braincells are damaged.  Our Goat Loans provide 6 goats to a family, for immediate milk and the chance of an income for essentials.  After 2 years the flock will have grown and the family will pass on 6 goats to another family.  This is one of the best microfinance schemes in the world.  

Please help us to help more families this year - you are saving lives in Darfur.  

Patricia 

Patricia Parker MBE, CEO and Chairman of Trustees

$62 provides a little goat for milk - precious nutrition for children 

$372 provides 6 goats for a familiy 

$95 provides a little donkey to carry water and firewood for the family - the only transport

$30 provides a donkey plough so they can grow more food

$45 provides training on how to care for the animals 

$73 provides emergency fodder  - supplimentary feed to stop animals from starving

$600 provides a paravet - there is no other animal care

$535 provides veterinary drugs for a revolving fund

$245 provides a strong cross-bred donkey for a midwife / paravet / water cart / school bus

Thank you for your support.   

Links:

• Kids for Kids website for more information
• Join the conversation on Facebook
• Tweet us @KidsforKids

Eyewitness report - how goats save lives in Darfur

It has been a difficult start to 2016, with many thousands of children in Darfur facing starvation.  As you know, Kids for Kids has a lot to do.  However, where help is being given, it is really working.  Our Programme Manager Hassan has just returned from a field trip to the village of Kindro in Darfur.  This village was adopted by Kids for Kids in 2013 and he has just been there to witness and report back on their first Goat Loan rotation. Beneficiaries who had Kids for Kids Goat Loans two years ago have now passed on new goats to the next families. Every family's story is unique, touching and inspiring in its own way.  Here is one of them: 

"Hadiya is 42 years old, married, and has 6 children." reports Hassan. "In September 2013 hers was one of the poorest families in Kindro, and she was selected by the Animal Loans Committee to participate in the Kids for Kids projects. Her family received a Goat Loan, a donkey, 2 blankets and 2 mosquito nets.  This was a unique opportunity for her to lift the whole family out of poverty and I am delighted to report that she and her children have worked hard to make the most of it."

Over the past two years Hadya has built a big rakouba to be used as a shade in summer and the roof for keeping hay and dry fodder.  She has been using mineral salt lick and providing water every day to keep the goats healthy.  Paravet Addouma treats her goats when needed and reports that she has provided medication 6 times in the past 2 years.  Eldest son Mohammed helps Hadya to look after the goats. Hadya uses the goats’ milk to feed her children and to make sauce. After repaying the Goat Loan Hadya wants to sell her extra bucks and buy a donkey cart.  Last year she used the local donkey plough, successfully producing a good harvest of okra, sesame and melons that earned about 1800 SDGs to help feed, clothe and cover emergency expenses for the family.  

"The past two years have changed our lives" Hadya said.  "Before this help from Kids for Kids I was praying for a miracle even to feed my children. They were so weak, I was truly afraid.  Now I have the blankets and mosquitos to protect them from getting sick, and the goats milk to make them stronger.  I have worked hard and built up a little flock of 20 goats, and I believe that I can give my children a better future."  

This is a total transformation since the family was struggling to survive 2 years ago.  And remember - she is now repaying the Goat Loan by passing on healthy young goats to a new family for a new loan, so this miracle will happen all over again. Thank you for being a part of this incredible work.  

$62 provides a goat for nutricious milk to stop starvation 

$95 provides a donkey to carry water and firewood

$372 provides 6 goats for a mother to give her family a livelihood

$600 trains a paravet to keep the animals healthy 

Thank you for your support.  You are saving lives in Darfur. 

Links:

• Kids for Kids website for more information
• Join the conversation on Facebook