Widespread drought left more than 13 million people vulnerable in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Djibouti, with some communities experiencing famine. We turned to you, our friends and supporters, for help. And help you did. A full year after we called on you to take action, we’re happy to report some of our positive results to date.
According to new field assessments from Action Against Hunger, in Aweil East, a South Sudanese county in the conflict-ridden border with Sudan, the prevailing malnutrition rate is a staggering 28.7%. That’s nearly double the threshold for a critical emergency.
Action Against Hunger friend Roger Thurow, senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, released his new book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change, last month. It is an intimate portrait of the lives of four smallholder farmers in western Kenya as they work to move from subsistence farming to sustainable farming, from farming to live to farming to make a living.
One is a 65-year-old woman, displaced by severe floods in 2010. The other is a 60-year-old man, a farmer forced from his fields and his home when the government’s clashes with regional insurgents intensified. They hail from different villages in Pakistan’s northern Nowshera District, and are unlikely to ever meet. But what they do share are compelling stories of human resilience in overcoming tremendous adversity to move forward positively with their lives—all with support from Action Against Hunger. These are their stories.
