Provide Lifesaving Relief to Drought Victims

When Bekelech’s husband died two years ago, she was left with a small garden in southwestern Ethiopia, two cows, and five children to raise alone. Because of chronic food insecurity and deep poverty, Bekelech was forced to sell both of her cows so that her children could eat. She could no longer afford to send her children to school or buy seeds for her garden. “We were all hungry. I would collect fire wood and sell charcoal with an empty stomach,” Bekelech recalled, referring to her only source of income. “When things were very difficult, my children would forage for wild cabbage.”

Each year, Ethiopia suffers from a cyclical pattern of floods and droughts. This year, El Niño, the global weather phenomenon, exacerbated the cycle of food insecurity. Excessive rainfall during the wet season led to flooding, widespread crop destruction, and a rise in the spread of water-borne diseases, such as Acute Watery Diarrhea. This was followed by several months of little to no rain, which grew into the worst drought Ethiopia has experienced in 50 years. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the extreme flooding and drought continues to negatively impact the lives and livelihoods of 9.7 million Ethiopians.

In response to the drought in Ethiopia, International Medical Corps is providing nutritional support and sustainable solutions to address those suffering from malnutrition in Ethiopia. We work with mothers and caregivers to teach positive, health-seeking feeding practices that rely on locally available food as well as provide nutrition services for children under five years of age. Our teams operate health and nutrition programs for mothers and their children, integrating hygiene and sanitation support. We also operate a resiliency program to provide more than 700 landowners like Bekelech with livestock and seeds to grow locally-sustainable, vitamin-rich foods.

Bekelech was introduced to International Medical Corps’ livelihoods and resiliency program. First, she attended a two-day training on integrated crop production and efficient farming practices. Soon afterwards, our resiliency program gave her three sheep and 200 kilograms of Irish potato seeds. Bekelech said, “We did not have proper food until I became an International Medical Corps Resilience Building Project beneficiary.” The program also connected her with the Rural Savings and Credit Cooperative, a UN-funded initiative that helps farmers get small, low-interest loans to improve agricultural production. Within months, Bekelech’s potato crops were so successful that she was able to feed her family, sell most of her produce at the market, pay back the loan, and invest in her children’s education.

We thank you and the GlobalGiving community for your support as we help drought-affected families like Bekelech's become resilient.

The East Hararghe Zone of Ethiopia is increasingly affected by chronic and repeated food insecurity due to the ongoing drought, and today, children are even more at risk for malnutrition. In kebeles, or communities, of Garawedaja, Gafra Guda and Awbere in the East Hararghe Zone, our teams are addressing the high levels of malnutrition among children between six months and five years with the Positive Deviance/Hearth program. Jennifer, a member of our Nutrition and Food Security department stresses that, “We work to promote the optimal feeding, caring, and health-seeking practices on a larger scale throughout the community. It’s quite empowering for caregivers – who are often mothers – to know that they hold local solutions to keeping their children well nourished; it’s not brought in by others.”

The Positive Deviance/Hearth program provides the opportunity for community members to teach positive behaviors from households with good nutrition-related practices to households with poorer ones. Jennifer continues on, “The approach uses formative research techniques to really understand the context and identify the optimal feeding, caring and health-seeking practices that are unusual in that they are practiced by only a few households in the same low resource context – but those are what are keeping their children better nourished than the majority of households.”

As Ethiopia is currently suffering from the worst drought in nearly 50 years, resulting in an unprecedented number of underweight children – particularly affecting those between the ages of six months and five years –implementing this program helps rehabilitate malnourished children and prevents new cases of malnutrition.

We are working to reach those with access to available local resources to help improve their nutritional status, yet remain particularly vulnerable, affected by drought or food insecurity. Since 2014, we have been implementing a similar nutrition program in the Wolayita Zone for children aged six months to two years-old. Of the 135 malnourished children who attended and completed Hearth sessions, 123, or 91%, increased significantly in weight. As we expand these efforts into new communities, past communities continue to practices what they learned, addressing malnutrition at its source.

The Positive Deviance/Hearth program taps into the needs and interest by rehabilitating malnourished children and training key community members, caretakers, and local government staff to prevent malnutrition and increase their resilience in the face of crisis. Our teams most recently trained local health staff to identify positive practices of households with well-nourished children in low resource settings, which can be promoted among other families to rehabilitate children as well as prevent malnutrition. We continue to assess the needs to provide the best possible impact in malnutrition prevention, given the ongoing drought and risk for food insecurity, while trained staff communicate improved feeding and caring practices and how to prevent future malnutrition to caregivers.  

We thank you and the GlobalGiving community for your support as we work with the local communities to increase nutrition resilience in the face of ongoing drought.