This year east Africa experienced its worst drought for 60 years, leaving more than 13 million people facing desperate food shortages. But in Tharaka, in Kenya’s Eastern Province, the community is proving resilient to the worst effects of the famine. This is because child-sponsorship funding, donated to the global children’s charity Plan UK, had been used to help the local people prepare for drought.
“Drought is cyclical in this part of Africa,” explains Sarah Mace, Plan UK’s disaster management programme officer for Africa. “So drought is expected by communities. This means that in the places where child sponsorship operates – where we have a prolonged commitment to the communities – community leaders are able to come to Plan and ask for help in preparing for the drought. So when the current crisis happened, Plan communities were better prepared.”
In Tharaka a number of projects had been initiated that enabled locals to better cope when the drought struck. The community programme, funded by child sponsorship and led by the ideas and needs of local children, had set up rainwater harvesting and promoted and distributed drought-resistant seeds, while fruit trees had been planted in schools and small-scale irrigation projects were put in place.
Mace has just returned from the region, where she says the situation is improving. “In Kenya some of the rains have come and the prospects for next season are starting to look better for the communities in which Plan works,” she says. “However I believe there are still people arriving each week into the camps in Ethiopia and Kenya from Somalia and so demand for food and medical supplies is still high.”
Plan believes that by having a relationship with communities through the child sponsorship programme, the organisation is better placed to react fast when a crisis strikes.
“Plan knew the drought was coming because of our closeness to the communities,” says Pace. “There is evidence that Plan communities were not affected as badly as other communities because of some of the preparation we do. However, we do not have some kind of magic supply of never-ending money so if we know the problem is coming we can alert donors and start to work towards it.
“So when the drought happened the communities were better prepared to start off with, but also it was easier and quicker for Plan to react once we had got the money from the Disaster Emergency Committee or another institutional donor. We were also able to react quicker and in a much more locality-specific manner so we had a much greater impact with our emergency funds because we know the community so well through the sponsorship funding.”
Through child-sponsorship funding Plan has been working within communities throughout Kenya and Ethiopia for the past few years on disaster and risk-reduction projects. These include rehabilitating boreholes, de-silting dams to allow water to flow better, and working with communities to improve farming techniques and plant drought-resistant crops such as millet and sorghum. “We’ve also been in Kenya working with schools on child-run agricultural clubs where children learn farming techniques at school and plant mango and citrus trees, which are particularly drought resistant and nutritious.”
When crisis strikes, be it famine, earthquake or floods, many of us reach deep into our pockets to help alleviate the suffering. However by making a small regular donation to Plan UK through child sponsorship, you will help communities to be better prepared to face the crisis in the first place, meaning the scale of the tragedy is reduced.
Originally posted at The Guardian
