Monday, September 28, 2009

Hunger Crisis Worsens in East Africa as Boreholes, Funds Dry Up

By Jason Gale
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Eastern Africa is threatened with famine after drought parched crops and the financial crisis sapped funds for food relief, aid groups said.
About 20 million people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda will need life-saving assistance until at least December, Save the Children said in a statement yesterday. The Westport, Connecticut-based organization said millions of children face malnutrition, disease and death.
“We’ve not seen a food crisis of this magnitude and severity in many years, and it is children who will suffer the most if the world fails to respond quickly,” Ned Olney, Save the Children’s vice president for global humanitarian response, said in the statement.
The World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, said last week it needs $3 billion to plug a budget shortfall. Without extra funding, the Rome-based United Nations agency said it will have to halve the number of people it’s supporting in Kenya and halve rations in Somalia.
“There are more hungry people in the world and less food aid than ever before,” WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in a Sept. 16 statement. “The double whammy of the financial crisis and the still record high food prices around the world is delivering a devastating blow. Throw in a storm, a drought and a conflict and you have a recipe for disaster.”
This year, the number of chronically hungry people worldwide is predicted to reach a record high of 1.02 billion, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Somalia is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years, with about half the population, or 3.6 million people, in need of emergency assistance, the FAO said in a Sept. 21 statement.
Conflict, Displacement
In sub-Saharan Africa 80 percent to 90 percent of all cereal prices monitored by the FAO in 27 countries are more than 25 percent higher than before food prices began soaring two years ago, according to the Rome-based FAO. Below-average rainfall, combined with conflict and displacement are aggravating serious food shortages in the region, it said.
In parts of central Kenya, 50 percent of shallow wells, boreholes and other water sources have dried up. People walk as many as 30 kilometers (19 miles) in search of water in the country where 3.8 million are suffering the impact of drought, the WFP said in Sept. 16 report.
The El Nino weather pattern, which usually brings heavy rains toward the end of the year, may exacerbate the problem by causing floods and mudslides, destroying crops both in the field and in stores, increasing livestock losses and damaging infrastructure and housing, the FAO said this week.
Health officials are battling an outbreak of acute watery diarrhea in Ethiopia, where 1,354 new cases and three deaths were reported in one week this month, Save the Children said. The government estimates that 6.2 million people, half of them children, will need emergency food aid in the next few months.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

First “Green Home” on Native American Reservation

Two months later is the first update from the Humanitarian Fields in the US
“We just completed the first home of it’s kind built on any Native American reservation in the history of this country. It is a Natural home that the family who will live in it has helped us to build. This is the poorest place in this country. The cost of a new home on the reservation can be up to $50,000. We have done this Green for FREE with the support of people who care!
We also received a WIND TURBINE donated to the project and it is on the way! We have two more domes (homes) to complete in the week of September and with the help of the HUB community, our goal will be complete!
As the Head of HUB Faculty, Dr. Michael Beckwith, says, ‘We are history makers!’
My heart is so RICH with gratitude and love for LIFE AND ALL OF ITS CHILDREN.”
Charlie Gay, CEO of HUB continues “We recognize the importance of USA based impact programs, and following on from last Novembers historic largest food and personal care drive in US history with Miracle on Mainstreet, HUB is so proud of the brilliance within its community for us to implement the first “Green Home” development in one of the poorest areas of this country”
Temba Spirit, founder of www.NaturesCompassion.com and host to HUBbies September 10th to 14th on the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation, has been hard at work serving the homeless, the incarcerated, and now the Native American community.
If you would like to be a history maker on the Pine Ridge Reservation, please join us September 10th to 14th by emailing sprytel@hubhub.org,
and if you can not be with HUB here please consider making a donation directly to www.NaturesCompassion.com today!
Join us at a HUB event to help make a Future Worth Choosing. Visit HUB’s Live Event section
HUB – Where We Connect to Change Our World
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
Written by HUB administration.