“When my kids are having fun, when they’re not hungry, when they jump left, right, and center, that’s the most pleasure I get,” she said.

But with rain in short supply, Senussi is worried about what the future will hold. Across the Sahel region of West Africa, a number of conditions are converging that could trigger a new food crisis. Low rainfall and water levels, poor harvests, lack of pasture, and high food prices are all causing serious problems, even as people are still trying to recover from the last food crisis in 2010 which affected 10 million of them.

“If the rain does not fall, it will be a disaster for us,” said Senussi. “The animals and the people need the rainy season. Pastures grow during the rainy season. Without rain there is no life. We’ll have to migrate but now we don’t know what will become of us.”

For many families, hunger is a hardship they have long endured.

“Usually, a family should eat three times a day, but now that is not the case,” said Koubra Hamid, a 40-year-old mother of eight children who lives in Sallal, Chad. She has only enough food to prepare one meal a day for her family—a ball made of rice or flour and served with a sauce.

That single meal a day is all Hamid’s family has had for several years. They don’t have the resources for more. To buy grain in the market, families may first have to sell one of their animals to get cash.

“If we had animals, we could feed our children more often,” she said, but as the pastureland has shrunk, so has the size of their herd. And in the harsh calculus herders know well, the 13 camels Hamid’s family has held onto don’t add up to full stomachs for her children.

“To prepare two meals a day in one household like ours, the head of the family should own at least 30 animals,” said Hamid. “Our only source of income comes from the rain. Rain falls, grass grows, animals graze this grass, then we sell the animals to provide for us. If the rain doesn’t fall, we cannot talk of life here.”

Nor is it easy to speak of hunger and its devastating consequences.

“The truth is, we don’t have the right to say that someone has died because of hunger,” said Ashta Hamid, Senussi’s older sister. “We cover this and say they died because they were sick, but really, lack of food kills.”

In Chad, where crop production from a recent harvest was down 50 percent, reports have indicated that 13 out of 22 regions could be affected by food insecurity.

Oxfam is gearing up to address the needs of the most vulnerable people in the region and in some places across the Sahel the organization has already been working with communities to increase their resilience.

In the village of Kouzi Wahid in northern Chad, Fatna Bakhit is growing tomatoes, watermelons, turnips, and onions with seeds and gardening tools she received from Oxfam. She’s counting on the produce to help tide her family over: The last harvest was poor and they lost most of their crops. And her husband has now gone off to look for work.

“When this effort bears fruit, I will be able to take care of my small family whilst awaiting support from my husband,” said Bakhit.

Across West Africa a new food crisis is looming over a population that has already endured three of them since 2005. The last—in 2010—affected 10 million people.

But with early action, the hardship and loss so many have suffered through in the past seven years could be softened and that’s what Oxfam America’s humanitarian workers Isaac Massaga, Julie Savane, and Greg Matthews are taking the first steps to put in place. They are just back from Boulal, a collection of villages in the north, where they were working to identify the greatest needs and the responses that would best fill them—now, and longer-term.

“We’re in a good position now to mitigate the serious consequences of an acute food crisis and to help people not resort to selling assets and cattle to meet their basic needs,” said Matthews, speaking from the Oxfam office in Dakar, Senegal’s capital.

Selling valuables—livestock, farm tools—is one of the strategies poor families without cash employ as a last resort when faced with no other way to get food: They’ll use the money to buy it in the market. But in selling these important assets, they are also limiting their ability to make a living, and that drags them deeper into poverty. Halting that cycle is key to averting a crisis.

During the last growing season, rainfall in Louga was erratic, said Matthews, sometimes coming in great gushes and sometimes not at all. For the crops—millet, cowpeas, and peanuts—the result was dismal.  The yields are off dramatically.

One farmer Matthews spoke with said he and his family had just consumed the last of the millet they had harvested in the end of October—300 kilograms worth. That was five times less than he would get in a good year. And the next planting season is still four months away.

How will people manage? Some, like the millet-grower, will pursue petty commerce, such as hunting for wood that they can sell as fuel in the market. But for many herders facing lean times, their strategy is to migrate with their livestock in the hope of finding pasture elsewhere.

Early migration

In Boulal this year, that migration has started much earlier than usual, said Matthews.

“The hardest months for pastoralists are April, May, and June—right before the rains begin,” he said. “But they’re starting to experience that now, in the beginning of February, so most of their productive animals have already started to migrate.” That means families must take their kids out of school prematurely and abandon other livelihood efforts, like gardens and small shops, that could help support them.

Poor harvests are also adding to the stress herders are feeling. With fewer crops pulled in from the fields that means fewer leftovers of leaves and stalks to feed to the livestock. And as the health of their animals declines, so does the value of sheep, goats and cattle.

Coupled with all of this, said Matthews, are climbing prices in the markets. A 50-kilogram sack of rice that once could be had in a trade of one sheep now costs a herder two or three.

“Because of all this, people are starting to employ early coping strategies,” Mathews said. “They are starting to change the way they eat and manage their finances to prepare for a long, hungry season.”

But even as they take these steps, the future hangs heavily.

“People are really worried about what will happen a month from now,” Mathews said. “Most of the food reserves are already exhausted.”

Solutions

Among the responses Oxfam is weighing are cash transfers—a tool that would allow hard-hit families to carry on as they would normally. With cash, they could buy the essentials they need during this critical period but not have to sell vital assets to do it, said Matthews. A second approach might be to help herders get access to fodder for their livestock, which provides both food and income for families.

But longer-term, the goal is to help communities become more resilient.

“The bottom line is working with communities to take charge of the issues and find solutions themselves,” said Matthews, pointing to a milking cooperative that had worked successfully in the area for a while. “It’s not about money. It’s about having, at the base community level, the desire to work together and the capacity to manage working collectively.”

If the rain continued at least there would be pasture for his two cows, guaranteeing their health and ensuring his family would have milk to drink. But the shorter rains, which should have fallen earlier in the season, had failed to come to Keih Tekli. And without them, Mehari was unable to sow his sorghum, one of two main crops he depends on. Instead, he would rely on teff, a tiny grain planted later in the year that is a staple of the Ethiopian diet.

For small-scale producers like Mehari, drought is the enemy—unpredictable and deadly. It’s the hardest part about farming, he says. And it’s one of the reasons that Mehari has joined more than 13,000 others in the Tigray region to buy weather insurance for their crops.

The insurance is part of a rapidly expanding program designed to help some of Ethiopia’s poorest farmers reduce the risk they face from disaster. When rainfall drops below a predetermined threshold, farmers who have bought the insurance receive a payout. Those too poor to pay with cash can trade their labor on community projects in exchange for the insurance. Launched by Oxfam in 2008 with the help of a host of partners including the Relief Society of Tigray, the program, now called the Rural Resilience Initiative, or R4, is set to expand into Senegal and two other countries in partnership with the World Food Programme.

Mehari has participated in the initiative for two years, swapping work—he has been planting tree seedlings in his community—for insurance. The first year he traded 16 days of labor for a premium worth 192 birr, or just over $11. That would have provided him with a payout of 600 birr, or nearly $35. Last year, Mehari invested 25 days of labor for coverage that would have given him a payout worth 800 birr, or more than $46.

That’s not enough to cover all his costs if he loses a harvest, but it’s enough of a buffer, perhaps, to prevent him from sinking deeper into poverty.

"It helps," he says, noting that if drought wiped out his harvest, the insurance would allow him to recover two-thirds of the 1,200 birr he invested in planting.

Divorced and the father of one daughter, Mehari says he had a basic understanding of how insurance works so when the opportunity arose to purchase some, he jumped at it. In his 38 years, he and his family had already experienced far more than their fair share of loss: Of the eight children to whom Mehari's mother gave birth, only two were still alive.

"I knew what insurance was. But the community members were confused and skeptical. How can it work?" he recalls them asking. "I accepted it (the insurance) without hesitation because if the crop fails, for me--it's like a parent's support in a bad situation."

As rain from the roof pooled into fat drops over the door, Mehari contemplated what the future would bring. He had already sowed more than an acre of land with teff seed and planned to plant the rest very soon.

"If the rain continues--like now--it won't be serious," he says of the hardship farmers face because of the lost sorghum season. "But if there is an early exit (of the rain), that will be disastrous."

For Mehari, insurance would soften the blow. But for countless other farmers tilling the rocky soil of Tigray, uncertainty sits heavily on their minds, its weight growing as increasingly erratic weather changes the age-old rules of agriculture.

The pair of oxen alone puts him ahead of many poor farmers in this northern part of the country. Harnessed as a team, the animals give Tadesse the power he needs to plow his fields in a timely manner and to be ready for the rains when they fall.  But if they don’t come, he’s now experimenting with a tool that will soften the blow: weather insurance.

Tadesse, who lives in the village of Hade Alga, is one of the more than 13,000 small farmers who are participating in a new insurance initiative launched by Oxfam and a host of partners, including the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST. The program allows those too poor to have cash on hand  to pay for the insurance by working on environmental improvement projects that benefit the whole community—like planting trees. Tadesse is among the small percent of farmers able to pay with money.

When rainfall drops below a predetermined threshold, insured farmers receive a payout helping them to recover some of their losses from a failed or severely curtailed harvest.

“Everyone in this community is starting to understand the rationale of the insurance, so we want to continue this practice,” said Tadesse, sitting with his wife and two young children in their one-room home on a rainy morning in August. But he admitted that the idea took a little getting used to. “We were skeptical when we heard (about  )it. We were even confused. How can you cover the loss of crops? It’s god’s work.”

After a great deal of discussion among community members, and many questions for REST, the idea began to click with people, Tadesse said. The local belief system holds that if you expect good things to happen, they will, and farmers are beginning to embrace insurance as part of that thinking, he added.

In 2010, Tadesse spent 60 birr—or about $3.50—on insurance for his teff, a staple grain in Ethiopia. As it turned out, the rains were plentiful that year and his harvest was very good, negating the need for a payout. But that didn’t stop him from doubling his investment in insurance the next year, paying 120 birr for a premium that would provide him with 400 birr—or $23,17—to cover his potential losses. The expense felt like a smart move.

“Anything can happen,” said Tadesse. “As security for me, I decided to double it. Even in the future I may double it again. You wish for better (rain), but you also have to accommodate the worst. In the future I don’t know what will happen, so that’s why I’m paying. But if the rain is good, I don’t regret paying that amount of money.”

The insurance has given him a sense of greater security, too, Tadesse said, so much so that he now has the confidence to take out a loan for livestock production. Once the rainy season ended, he planned to borrow money to buy a small herd of sheep and goats.

“If you buy four or eight sheep, they’ll reproduce in a short period of time,” said Tadesse. “It’s a good source of income for my family. It makes our life comfortable.”

With the stability he is striving to create for his family—in an environment made increasingly uncertain by changing weather patterns—Tadesse said he hopes his children will go far in school, an opportunity that stopped for him after fifth grade when he had to quit to work on his family’s farm and help care for his aging parents.

“I’m very confident my children will go further—up to where they can reach,” Tadesse said. “Education helps you use your capacity, not only in farming but in trading—in every part of life. If you’re educated you introduce new ideas into your agricultural practices. You analyze the future. It all needs education.”

And with the bit of security insurance is now providing, the dreams Tadesse has for his family have moved a little closer. Soon, other small farmers in Africa will have a chance at greater security, too:  The weather insurance program, now called the Rural Resilience Initiative, or R4, is set to expand into Senegal and two other countries in partnership with the World Food Programme.

Thomazeau—home to about 52,000 inhabitants—is a rural community in western Haiti, surrounded by mountains and little-touched by the earthquake two years ago.  In fact, it was an area that saw a large influx of arrivals from the capital immediately after the quake.  But it is also economically deprived.

Most people here are “planteurs” – small-scale farmers living off their land and selling what crops they can.  But poor roads are a major problem in getting goods to markets.  And, as Dumel pointed out, there are few economic opportunities available in the community.

That’s also true across Haiti, where an estimated 75 percent of the population is not in salaried employment, and jobs are scarce.

Finding work is especially challenging in rural areas, where even the most casual of jobs are hard to come by. This was a major issue in Haiti, as much before the earthquake as now, and it is hampering people’s ability to rebuild their lives.  

According to an Oxfam survey last year, finding work is the top priority for most Haitians. And that’s why a project which Oxfam supports in Thomazeau is raising the hopes of many women.

The women have their own section within ODECT known as RAFARE. That stands for Rassemblement des Femmes pour l’Accès aux Ressources Économiques, or Rallying Women to Access Economic Resources. Its goal is to try to improve the economic status of women. The group owned one milling machine and earned money processing grain brought to the center by farmers and merchants.  Oxfam hired RAFARE after the earthquake to help provide milled cereals which formed part of food kits that were distributed in the outdoor camps where people had sought shelter.
Oxfam is now helping the women again-- with funds and training, including enlisting the help of expatriate Haitian experts with specific skills.  The group is modernizing its service center and expanding its operation.

The small building where they’re currently located will double in size, allowing the women to have storage facilities where they can stock processed and unprocessed grains and market milled cereals. Oxfam has helped them to purchase two new grinding machines and is providing training and other equipment.  The goal is to enable the women to run their operation as a full-fledged business.  They will buy and sell locally produced grain throughout the year, rather than just seasonally; and during lean times, in between the harvests, they can sell surplus stocks in the local market.

 “It will bring more economic opportunities here. There will be more jobs and more money coming in,” said Marie-Claude Estenfile, general secretary of RAFARE.  “There was always a shortage of grains being sold in the local markets from April to June, but we will be able to provide processed grains during that period.

It means people won’t have to travel an hour or more to some of the markets, like in Croix des Bouquets, 24 kilometers away, to buy what they need.  It will be easier to purchase food locally and we will help to strengthen the supply chain. The markets will be busier; the money will benefit the local economy.”

Having proper storage facilities and being able market their own cereals will enable the women to work all year round, and not just stay open for business during the busy harvest period.

“It will guarantee people’s food security here,” said Dumel, adding that it will also create new jobs. “During the lean periods, people would have to buy imported rice and grain from other places.  But we will have stocks to sell and supply to the local markets.”

RAFARE’s members are excited about the project.

“It gives me hope for the future,” said Hermircie Alfred, 40.  “I hope we can buy and sell the grains locally all year round; and we can make more profits.”

 “There are very few job opportunities here,” Alexina Augustin, 45, a mother of eight.  “The only jobs we can really find are selling cereals and this project will help us.  I lost my home and land a few months ago during flooding and now I can’t send my children to school.  This will be a lifeline for me,” she said.

After the Peruvian government cited Doe Run for environmental violations, the company closed the smelter in 2009, citing the high cost of complying with the government’s requirements for cleanup. In April 2011, Doe Run’s parent company Renco Group filed a lawsuit against Peru, claiming its actions violated the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement. 

With the case now due to go to international arbitration, the multi-billion-dollar Renco Group is lobbying the US government for support. At the same time, Oxfam and partners are calling on Congress to make sure that Doe Run doesn’t abandon its commitments to the community where it did business for more than a decade.

“Renco Group has money, power, and influence on Capitol Hill,” said Keith Slack, manager of Oxfam America’s Right to Know, Right to Decide campaign. “The people of La Oroya don’t. But they have an equal right to make their voices heard.”

Fighting a double standard

Oxfam America’s oil, gas, and mining program has been working with partner organizations in La Oroya since 2000. Their efforts around the current case are twofold:

• In Peru, they are calling on the government to stand firm on its environmental concerns and not negotiate any back-room deals with Doe Run.
• In the US, they are asking Congress to hold Renco Group and Doe Run to their promises, including fully paying for cleanup of the polluted town and funding health programs for affected residents.

Slack compared La Oroya to Herculaneum, Missouri, another small town where Doe Run operates a lead smelter. After millions of dollars in environmental fines and multiple lawsuits that helped set stricter US standards for lead pollution, Doe Run has said it will close the Herculaneum smelter in 2013 and explore opening a new  earth-friendly facility.

“This is a company with a clear double standard, since the health situation in Peru is even worse than it was Missouri,” said Slack. “If [La Oroya] was in our own backyard, we wouldn’t allow this to happen.”

Children’s health at risk

Rosa Amaro’s family has lived in for generations in La Oroya Antigua—the neighborhood directly across the river from the smelter and one of the worst affected by pollution. In 2002, Amaro and her children participated in a study conducted by Peru’s Ministry of Health. The tests showed that her older son, then age 8, had 58 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. (The US Center for Disease Control recommends medical action at anything above 10 micrograms per deciliter.) Now 17, he suffers from gastritis and severe pain requiring repeated trips to the hospital.

Amaro’s family also participated in a 2005 St. Louis University study, which not only detected elevated lead levels in children, but also found that residents had above-normal levels of cadmium, arsenic, and antimony. These toxic elements are associated with cancer, kidney failure, and other medical problems.

After their children tested positive for lead in 2002, Amaro and other concerned parents formed a grassroots group called the Movement for the Health of La Oroya (MOSAO). “[We want] to spread information about what’s going on,” said Amaro. “Children in Peru and in the US have the same right to live in a healthy environment, and their parents have a right to dignified work.”

The issue of work has divided La Oroya, where some say closing the smelter permanently would take away most of the town’s jobs. For participating in the health studies and publicly speaking out against the company, Amaro has faced harassment and repeated threats of violence. Even so, she recently visited the US for an Oxfam speaking tour with other women from mining-affected areas.

Whether or not the smelter reopens, said Amaro, Doe Run must still meet its environmental and social obligations to the community. “The ground is totally polluted by heavy metals,” she said. “It’s not only the government’s responsibility to clean up the mess, but also that of the company, which has been operating here for so many years.”

Meanwhile, in a neighborhood where residents once had trouble breathing outdoors, the last two years have brought a measure of relief.

“You don’t feel the chemical fumes in the air, and you can even see some green coming out of the ground,” said Amaro. “We would love it if it would remain the way it is right now.”

Take action: Tell Congress to stand with the people of La Oroya and hold the company accountable.

Estimable lives in a very small earth-walled home near a drainage channel running along a dirt road. The land around her is almost all mud and the road is under a foot of water in places. Floods plague her village, called Lameau, in the community of Grande-Saline in Haiti’s Artibonite River valley.

This is one of Haiti’s most productive agricultural areas, and over the years, the government and international donors have built a network of canals and channels, to divert water to dry areas, and drain out the wet ones. Small villages line these channels. Just after the harvest, many are drying their rice crop on tarps on the side of the road, near their small homes, some of which are quaint wooden houses that resemble gingerbread cottages. Others are more modest earth-walled dwellings. Children play and swim in the channels, laughing and splashing in the sun.

It looks idyllic but the Artibonite River valley can be a tough place to live, Estimable says. “When there’s too much water in our houses, in our fields, we get upset stomachs. It’s very hard to live here with so much water.” The lack of clean water in 2010 after one particularly rainy period coincided with a cholera outbreak which killed 300 people in this area, according to local officials.

Working for cash

Grande-Saline’s mayor, Erole Romeus, drew up a plan to clear out the mud and vegetation choking six kilometers (3.75 miles) of the secondary channels like the one near Estimable’s house. He’s also hired heavy equipment to widen them to handle more water flow. The project is employing two 132-member work teams in a cash-for-work program that provides much needed wages of about five dollars a day for 12 days. The project prioritizes hiring people living near the channels. About 2,000 people in 400 households live in this area and will benefit from better flood control.

Sansion Morisette is one of the workers; she has just spent the morning raking weeds out of the narrow channel running along the road next to Estimable’s house. “It’s about time we started this work,” she says. “I’m out on the street now because water destroyed my house in Rossignol. Take a look around you, we’re lucky if we can get two bags of rice out of our harvest sometimes, the water just eats everything we grow.”

Mayor Romeus says the project in Grande-Saline should take the community a long way towards reducing flooding, especially during the annual hurricane season. “Every time it rains, we can have 200 to 300 small houses destroyed,” he says standing on a flooded road next to the drainage channel, where scores of workers in white t-shirts are clearing away plants and other debris.

“We started talking about rehabilitating these channels as a means to deliver a durable solution to the people here,” Romeus says. “We came to Oxfam America because it is an organization that is interested in helping vulnerable people reduce the risks of disasters.

“Since we cleared all this out, people will probably have an opportunity to harvest. But if we did not, in another week we would have been in danger: the people, crops, and animals.”

Oxfam is devoting $20,000 for this project, which is covering about half the costs and supports the cash-for-work component, wages for heavy equipment operators, and fuel. It’s part of a larger program to reduce vulnerability to disasters in the countryside, and make it easier for people to make a living in farming, an alternative to the overcrowded conditions in Port-au-Prince.

Sancion Morisette is optimistic that the newly rehabilitated channels will help them. “Now I know that when it rains, the water will flow in the channel and go directly to the sea.”

Teklehaimanot  is part of an Oxfam America program called HARITA, or Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation, that has designed a way for the country’s poorest farmers to get weather insurance for their crops, allowing more than 13,000 this year to buy themselves and their families a rare bit of security. For 1,810 farmers in seven villages hit hardest by the drought, each will now get a share of the total $17,392 in payouts.

“Last season the rain was bad and we didn’t produce what we had hoped for,” said Teklehaimanot. “So the payment is good for us. We know it won’t cover all our losses, but for me, at least, I can cover the loan I took to buy fertilizers.”

Launched in 2008 with a host of partners including the Relief Society of Tigray, the program aims to build the resilience of farmers by offering not only insurance, but increasing access to credit, encouraging savings, and reducing the risk of climate change through improved land-management practices.

“The project is beyond giving emergency aid. It increases the confidence of farmers and encourages them to take risk to improve their productivity,” said Gezachew Gebru, a representative from Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture. “We need to do more to encourage others to join this effort and make insurance available to all farmers.”

Celebrating a milestone

The payout announced on Saturday, Nov. 12, represents an important milestone for the initiative which, in partnership with the World Food Programme, is set to expand into Senegal and two other countries. Triggered when rainfall dropped below a pre-determined threshold, the payout is the first participating farmers have received since the program began, proving the value of investing in the future.

For Haile Selasse Negash, a 48-year-old farmer from the village of Getskymilesily, the payout has meant he can look ahead and plan—something that might not have been possible had he lost all his assets to drought, as so many have in recent months. Across East Africa, more than 13 million people are ensnared by the drought and food crisis.

“Last season it started raining and it stopped all of a sudden. We didn’t get rain for a full month and that damaged our crops,” said Negash. “With the money I get I am planning to buy seed for the next season.”

Work for insurance

And it’s not just the payout Negash is happy about; it’s what the program is doing for his community.

“For me, the major benefit is not the money we receive but the work we are doing to recover and protect our environment through those paying for the insurance with labor,” he said.

A key innovation of the initiative is making it possible for the poorest farmers—those without cash—to trade their labor for their premiums. Of the 13,195 farmers now insured, 91 percent of them, or 12,064, are working on projects that can strengthen their communities in the face of climate change, such as planting trees and improving irrigation.

“What we really like to see is farmers increase productivity through climate adaption and improved production technologies,” said Mandefro Nigussie,  deputy regional director  of Oxfam America’s Horn of Africa office. “The biggest actors in this are the farmers and the insurance companies. The two have to work together to determine the best working conditions that will benefit both. We all know that insurance by itself is not the answer, but it plays a big role on contributing towards the growth of the country’s economy.”

This story was reported by Selome Kebede.

The forecast predicts this short wet season will bring an average amount of rainfall to Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Coupled with humanitarian assistance and anticipated decreases in locally produced cereal prices, the rain means that the food security situation in Kenya and Ethiopia is likely to improve over the next few months. But in southern Somalia, the situation remains dire, with an estimated four million people in crisis and 750,000 men and women experiencing famine.

In many areas of the region emergency conditions are expected to persist well into 2012. Households remain extremely vulnerable to additional shocks as the severe drought has depleted herders’ assets and reduced crop production. Several good seasons are required to rebuild herd sizes, improve harvests, and reduce debt levels.

The trouble with rain

In some areas flooding and mudslides are common during the rainy season. For example, in Ethiopia’s Somalia region localized flash floods have already been reported in areas along the Wabishabelle river, affecting an estimated 18,000 people with damage to crops and livestock.

The rain and a drop in temperature are also likely to kill cattle that have already been weakened by a lack of food and water—further undermining the ability of herding families to earn a living and recover from the drought.

In addition, the rains and the risk of contamination of water sources can lead to an increase in water-borne diseases such as typhoid fever, acute watery diarrhoea (AWD), cholera, and hepatitis A. Outbreaks of vector-borne diseases, particularly those spread by mosquitos, such as malaria, dengue and Rift Valley Fever are likely during the rainy season, and increases in cases of pneumonia and respiratory tract infections are common. More than 1,200 cases of dengue have been confirmed in Kenya’s Mandera District since Sept. 23. Flooding in Turkana and Pokot, areas in northwest Kenya, has caused a spread of malaria in the Upper Rift Valley, with outbreaks in Turkana, Kakuma, and surrounding districts.

Displaced people within Somalia and those who have crossed into Kenya and Ethiopia are particularly vulnerable as many of them are living in overcrowded conditions, with limited access to water and sanitation facilities and inadequate shelter. Outbreaks of measles, acute watery diarrhoea (AWD), cholera, malaria, and pneumonia have already been reported in camps in Mogadishu. In Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya five measles-related deaths and 113 cases were reported during the last week of September.

But as people’s needs increase, the rain makes it harder to reach them: Rivers flood their banks, bridges break or get washed away, and roads become impassable. In Ethiopia, access to refugee camps in Dollo Ado is already challenging as the rains make airstrips and roads impassable.

Contingency planning

In Kenya, Oxfam is mapping the accessibility of certain areas and working with partners to devise contingency plans to meet the needs of people there. Public health promotion teams are doing environmental clean-up and awareness-raising campaigns. Boreholes are being rehabilitated and chlorine kits and water purification tabs have been distributed. In the areas where Oxfam has been distributing cash to vulnerable households which will be cut off during the rains, a double payment was made to cover the period between October and November so people do not go without.

In Ethiopia Oxfam has expanded its public health promotion and acute watery diarrhea preparedness activities, with a particular focus on women who manage water and sanitation at the household level. Oxfam teams are working with aid groups and other local partners to ensure a strong response to any outbreaks of acute watery diarrhea. As the rains commence, water trucking is being reduced and teams are supporting regional and zonal authorities to ensure emergency stocks and water treatment kits can be mobilized. Cash for work activities and market-support activities are ongoing and animal health interventions, such as vouchers for veterinary visits and vaccinations, have started up.

In Somalia Oxfam partners have been preparing for outbreaks of acute watery diarrhea by setting up distribution posts in camps for displaced people. The posts contain oral rehydration sachets, sugar, salt, soap for washing hands, and chlorine bleach. Partners have also increased the frequency and methods for public health messaging and are working with committees to oversee the water and sanitation services.

Concerns ahead

In Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, the UN, government, and non-governmental groups have prepared contingency plans to respond to any increase in needs: Strong coordination and monitoring is essential.

The delivery of food aid remains a key concern. In Kenya the World Food Programme (WFP) has reported delays in food aid distribution in Wajir, Garissa and Mandera as roads are impassable. Roads in Garissa and Hola, key entry points into the Dadaab refugee camps, are completely cut off.

Ongoing conflict, insecurity, and restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Somalia are the key factors which will hinder a more effective response to the increased needs caused by the rains. For example, armed groups in many parts of South Central Somalia are not allowing mass public immunization campaigns despite outbreaks of deadly diseases like measles.

The recent military incursion by Kenyan forces into Somalia, as well as insecurity in refugee camps on the Kenyan side of the border, is also impacting on the humanitarian situation in certain areas of Kenya and Somalia. Fighting in Somalia is likely to cause further civilian displacement and casualties at a time when thousands of people risk imminent death due to famine.

A long trek from the outskirts of the Baidoa in Bay Region brought the family here—to a new camp for displaced people called Booli Qaran, which, ironically, means “looted wealth of the state.”

It’s here that Oxfam’s partner, SAACID, has opened another center for community therapeutic care, or CTC, one of 14 the organization is now operating across the city. And it’s here that Sahro’s son, Ahmed, has been receiving care following months of sickness that left him increasingly weak.

“I really don’t know exactly what is wrong with him, but I think the problem is linked to hunger,” says Sahro. “This nutrition center is extremely important for us. Without it, hundreds of children would have already died from malnutrition.”

Implemented in partnership with Oxfam, the CTC program has been treating children since 2009. It is now admitting more than 3,000 malnourished children, like Ahmed, every week.

“We were displaced after drought killed all the animals we had. We had goats and some cattle; we also had a small farm which we cultivated in order to sustain our lives; but unfortunately there has been no rain at all, and this caused everything to die,” says Sahro.

“We endured a very difficult trip from Bay to Mogadishu, because we traveled on foot for almost 155 miles. I was carrying my sick child on my back, while my husband was carrying another child who is older than my youngest. We begged from Bay to Mogadishu—from district to district and from village to village, for food and water. In reality, we were very lucky to survive. We know of so many families who have lost relatives or children. We thank Allah, who has allowed us to come to Mogadishu together and survive.”

Opened on July 12, the Booli Qaran camp was established for rural families flooding the capital in search of food, services and employment. More than 5,000 people now live here in difficult conditions. The day after the camp opened, SAACID set up a CTC center, which, like the others it operates across the city, have been working hard to save lives.

Care for triplets

Ambiyo, a mother of triplets, knows well how important the centers are. She brought her triplets—daughters Qaali and Naciimo, and son Abdirisaq—to one of them recently. Qaali was immediately referred to the SAACID’s outpatient therapeutic program section at the clinic, when she was found to be severely malnourished and in need of immediate treatment. Ambiyo notes that her daughter was in a state of complete frailty back then.

Her other 2 children—Abdirisaq and Naciimo—were placed into the supplemental feeding program section, which treats moderately malnourished children. As treatment has continued over two months, they have all been recovering.

“All of my triplets were weak, especially Qaali, who was so weak and sick and refused to breastfeed at all,” says Ambiyo. “The other two were weak and thin, but still breastfeeding. I was so worried that Qaali wasn’t going to make it. We were well received when I first came to the clinic and the nurses immediately said that they could help us.”

“Our daily life depends on what my husband earns with his work as a barber, and that is not enough for such a large family,” says Ambiyo. “I hope my triplets will recover from the sickness arising from malnutrition problems, especially Qaali who is the weakest. So far, so good.”

SAACID’s senior staff and management lived through the last great Somali famine of 1991-1992, and find this new crisis heartbreaking.

SAACID-Somalia’s Country Director, Raha Janaqow, said, “I had hoped to never see such a hell in Somalia ever again. Yet, here we are, 20 years later, having endured 20 years of statelessness and anarchy; having to see another generation of Somalis suffer and die of starvation. I have seen so much suffering, and still I weep. I no longer know where my tears come from. All we can do is keep helping as much as we can with the resources we have, and hope for a better time.”

Following a series of death threats and a poisoning attempt, he lives with 24-hour police protection at his home in El Salvador. He worries about the safety of his wife and three children. He can name friends and colleagues who haven’t been so lucky: Ramiro Rivera, shot in 2009. Francisco Duran Ayala, college student, murdered earlier this year. Dora Sorto, eight months pregnant when she was killed in 2009.

But Pineda, who visited Boston last week during a US speaking tour, takes this violence—as well as the honors he’s received—in stride . Good or bad, all are part of the fight that’s dominated his life for the last seven years: a battle, now playing out on the international stage, to protect Salvadoran communities from the harmful effects of a gold mine.

When a river runs dry

This year Pineda won the Goldman Environmental Prize, a prestigious award honoring grassroots heroes worldwide. His all-volunteer organization, the Environmental Committee of Cabañas (CAC), includes members from 26 different towns in the Cabañas region. He’s partnered with Oxfam America to take his fight to the national and global level.

But before Pineda became a leader, he was a farmer. His fight began in his cornfields in 2004, when the river that irrigated his crops suddenly ran dry.

Much of El Salvador’s surface water is polluted, and in rural areas few people have access to municipal water. So Pineda and other farmers were outraged to discover pumps draining the clean water from their local river to construct the Pacific Rim gold mine. They took their concerns to their mayor, who told them that the Canadian mining company was too big to fight.

“That’s when we said ‘fine—we’re going to organize, and we’ll be responsible for getting these people to leave,’” Pineda recalled. 

Their efforts convinced Pacific Rim to take down the pumps. Meanwhile, Pineda began to study and talk with others about the long-term environmental consequences of gold mining, including toxic chemicals in the local water supply. Company representatives denied locals' concerns in a series of public meetings. “They even tried to convince us that cyanide was safe to drink,” said Pineda.

With support from Oxfam, Pineda and others traveled to communities affected by mining in Honduras and Peru. There, they documented severe environmental damage, increased poverty, and human rights violations. “We brought this [evidence] home and said ‘look what’s in store for us,” said Pineda. “That helped convince local people they didn’t want this mine in their community.” 

The fight of their lives

CAC’s local and national demonstrations against the mine helped achieve a major victory: The Salvadoran government denied Pacific Rim’s mining permit in 2009, citing potential environmental hazards. Pacific Rim has since scaled down their operations in Cabañas. They also filed a $77 million lawsuit against the government, arguing that the denial violates the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The US supported El Salvador in the trade dispute, currently being heard by an international tribunal at the World Bank. 

“This is a key case for determining whether mining will take place in El Salvador, and it has broader implications for countries’ right to decide what kinds of development are most appropriate for them,” said Keith Slack, manager of Oxfam America’s Right to Know, Right to Decide campaign. 

Meanwhile, Pineda and other leaders in the anti-mining movement have become targets.

“No one has been prosecuted for these actions,” said Pineda of the murders of his fellow CAC members. “The police say they were killed because of ‘personal matters’, but all of the people who died were environmental activists.” Oxfam America is working with international civil society organizations to increase global awareness of the human rights violations in Cabañas, and has raised concerns with members of Congress and the Obama administration.

Pineda said the media attention he’s received since winning the Goldman Prize has helped protect him from further attacks. But with the honor comes an increased sense of personal responsibility.

“You feel the weight of trying to help all of the people who have put their faith in you,” he said.

Still, Pineda remains committed to his goal of stopping mining in El Salvador for good.

“This is our responsibility as parents: to protect our land and water for our kids,” he said. “We’ve been in this fight for years, and the mining company has tried frightening us and diminishing our movement. …  All of us are volunteers, but we’re still ready to give our lives for this.”

In the darkness of Magartu Balcha’s one-room house, specks of sky blink through the worn thatched roof. The holes aren’t big enough to provide any light, but in a downpour surely rain will drip through. On the dirt floor stretches a mattress—the bed she shares with her two children, huddled together for warmth. The family has no blankets.

Balcha, a 36-year-old widow, has brought us to her home here in the Ethiopian community of Mallima Bari as a sort of bench mark—a way for us to understand where she is in her life at this moment and where she’s determined to go now that she has access to irrigation and the support of a network of other small farmers like herself.

“I will reconstruct my house and show you a better house,” says Balcha firmly. “When I change my house, I will make you coffee.” In Ethiopia, ceremoniously serving guests coffee—three piping hot cups per person—is an important social tradition.

Recently, Balcha joined a group participating in a project launched by Oxfam America’s partner, Sustainable Environment and Development Action, or SEDA. Tapping a well that they helped dig and that SEDA and Oxfam outfitted with a pump and pipes, Balcha and 34 other farmers are funneling water to nine hectares of  land--about 24 acres, or a little more than half an acre each. Now, at last, they are free from worry about whether the rain will come on time and in sufficient quantity to guarantee their harvests. With a flick of a switch, they have water on demand—water to feed their crops and build their dreams.

Sitting in front of a field crowded with tall corn, Balcha beams with a surety that would not have been possible a year or so ago. Grief consumed her then: Her oldest child, a 9-year-old boy, had drowned one day while she was away working as a laborer. His dream had been to go to school and he had begged her to send him. But Balcha didn’t have the means.

“He asked me, ‘please, my mom, buy me an exercise book,” she recalled. Her answer? “Next year I can buy you an exercise book and clothes, but this year we don’t even have food.”

Two months later, she said, the terrible accident happened.

In the year that followed, burdened by needs that she could barely meet, Balcha said she thought about leaving her family and running away.

“I was confused,” she said softly.

It was around then that she learned of the irrigation project and the opportunity to join it.

“I was suffering before I joined this project because I didn’t have my husband. I didn’t have any support,” said Balcha. ”Now I have clothes for my body, food for my stomach, and my field is in good condition. When you are hungry, you can’t think of getting satisfied. When you are thirsty you can’t think of getting enough water. But now I’m satisfied.”

A voice for many

Balcha’s story speaks for others in a district where many rural residents make their living by raising animals and cultivating crops on fields fed only by rain. But it’s a hard life—and sometimes an impossible one. In this Central Rift Valley, severe food shortages are a frequent problem.

Without money to put into better production—fertilizer for plants, and infrastructure for irrigation—farmers can’t easily coax much from their land. Instead, like Balcha, they rent their fields to investors who can afford the technology to reap bountiful harvests. And sometimes, small farmers become day laborers on land that is theirs, working for someone else’s profit instead of their own.

But for the group now tilling this 24-acre plot, a reliable source of water could change their lives and the lives of their families. The project is part of a broader Oxfam America water program, set to run through 2020, that works with communities and local partners to help some of the poorest Ethiopians in moisture-stressed regions access water for their fields and animals and manage the resource in a sustainable fashion. With water comes food—and resilience.

Here, in Mallima Bari, the hope is that farmers will begin to cultivate valuable market crops—onions, tomatoes, green peppers, cabbages—that could boost their incomes. From the sale of their harvests, participants, who have formed the Mallima Gale Small-Scale Irrigation Co-op, will pool 10 percent of their earnings toward keeping the irrigation enterprise running. One of the biggest costs is fuel, now running at about 17 birr per liter—close to $4 a gallon. It takes about six liters of fuel each time a farmer pumps water through a half-acre field.

Strength in community

But it’s not just the pump and water that have brightened prospects for Balcha, it’s the deeper connection she has made with her neighbors in the irrigation group and the spirit of cooperation.

“We have very good collaboration,” says Balcha, noting that she had her fields plowed with the help of co-op members and their oxen. Ethiopians measure their land in hectares. One hectare is nearly equal to 2.5 acres. Balcha’s irrigated plot of corn measures a quarter hectare. In addition, she has a half-hectare of rain-fed corn and a quarter hectare of Ethiopia’s staple grain, teff, which is also dependent on the rain.

New agricultural techniques she learned through SEDA could help her crops do better than they have in the past, and the results so far have made her optimistic. She is planting her corn in rows now instead of broadcasting it loosely, and expects the December harvest will produce enough to feed her family as well as some to sell.

 “Physically, it looks healthy,” says Balcha. “When you look at it, you get encouraged.”

And with that feeling of encouragement comes the taste of possibility: For Balcha, that means school for her children—an opportunity she never had.

“Had I had an education, I would have been someone better than I am now,” says Balcha. “I’m in darkness myself. I want them to be in light.”

 “We took eight mules for two hours into the mountains and crossed three rivers, one of them nearly up to my waist,” says Emilie Gassier, the Oxfam cholera response coordinator in southern Haiti. “When we returned, even the mules were exhausted.”

The mission of the Oxfam team that day: deliver supplies to help a rural Haitian community in the province of Nippes prevent and prepare for cholera outbreaks.  

 Cholera is a treatable disease, but in the southern province of Nippes, there have been too many opportunities for it to run its deadly course. 

 “Nippes hasn’t had the most cases of cholera,” says Oxfam public health specialist Myra Foster, who analyzes health data from the epidemic as it emerges.  “But the mortality rate there tells us that people who catch the disease aren’t getting the urgent care they need.”

The list of likely reasons for that is long:  contaminated water sources, fierce terrain, and all the things that are missing – information, transportation, water systems, sanitation, and enough government, aid agencies, and funding to make public health a reality. 

So, as the rainy season of 2011 approached – and with it, the expectation of a resurgence of cholera – Oxfam stepped in.

 Clean water from a tap

A tap that won’t turn on – sign of a water network that has fallen into disrepair – is a common sight in this part of the country. It represents more than an inconvenience: a community that once drew water from a spring-fed tap may now be collecting it from a more hazardous, cholera-infected source. 

When Oxfam launched its program in Nippes, the team quickly tackled defunct water systems in four towns, repairing and replacing taps, pipes, and other hardware. But they made an important addition: a simple chlorination system. The chlorinator – provided by aid agency International Action -- is an upright length of PVC tubing attached to a water pipe that secures a stack of fat chlorine tablets in the flow of rushing water. As the lowest tablets dissolve, gravity draws fresh ones into place. The result? Water safe enough to drink straight from the tap.

“The water has improved,” says Eliese Javer, a young mother living in the town of Mathurin, as she washed a basin of clothes at an outdoor water tap. “Where we used to take the water from was bad. The water was not clean, and there was a risk of cholera. Now, it’s safer for the health of the people.” 

Not only that, she says, but the tap gives people access to running water in a convenient place. Instead of hauling five-gallon buckets up from a stream three or four times a day, she carries home a gallon now and then.  “If anyone is thirsty, they can just come here. It doesn’t even take a minute.”

A measure of security

But for many at-risk communities - including remote mountain villages - the town water system isn’t so much broken as non-existent. Here, women and children have always drawn their drinking water from rivers – rivers that now carry lethal doses of cholera and other infectious bacteria. 

In the village of O’Rouck on the banks of Rivière Froide, there are two new arrivals: sturdy metal stands holding three-liter plastic containers. They are chlorine dispensers – known locally as bwats a clowoks. With the turn of a handle, a bwat releases a measured dose of chlorine solution. One dispenser is designed to disinfect a gallon jug of water; the other is for five-gallon buckets.

Oxfam has placed chlorine dispensers like these in 30 rural communities, and the results have been cleaner, safer drinking water.

“Now, we are less scared about cholera, because with the bwat we treat the water and we know it will bring health,” says resident Louisimene Occean.  “My children have stopped having bellyaches.”

From the porch of her tiny house near the river, eighty-five-year-old Saintalia Denis tells visitors about how losing a neighbor to the disease sharpened her focus on risks her community faces.

“It’s really important to use treated water to avoid microbes and disease,"  she says, and to use good hygiene practices. "After putting in the bwat a clowoks, Oxfam explained to us how to protect ourselves from cholera. Now, after coming from the latrine, I wash my hands. Before eating, I wash my hands. And I drink treated water.” 

 “The cholera epidemic is still very serious, and chlorine dispensers alone can’t stop it in its tracks,” says Kenny Rae, public health engineer in Oxfam’s Boston office. “For that, people need strong water, sanitation, and health care infrastructure. But the bwats a clowoks are making a difference.”

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The companies in PREP are: Calvert Investments, Entergy, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., Levi Strauss & Company, Starbucks, and Swiss Re. Other partners in PREP include BSR and Ceres. Oxfam America serves as PREP’s secretariat. Read the PREP Mission Statement.

The goals of this one-year Partnership are to:

• Promote practices and economic growth that help both vulnerable communities and business adapt to the impacts of climate change ; and
• Promote public policies that facilitate adaptation efforts to prepare for and respond to the consequences of a changing climate.

Managing risk

From extreme weather events to glacial melt, from water scarcity to rising sea levels – the effects of climate change on global economic stability and global security can no longer be ignored. Even with aggressive mitigation efforts to reduce emissions, the consequences of climate change on communities across the planet are significant. For many, the results are more severe weather-related disasters, increased food and water insecurity, scarce natural resources, and health problems.

Community risks are business risks. On a functional level, the impact of climate change on companies’ global supply chains is already visible. For example, changes in weather patterns affect growing conditions for crops like coffee and cotton. Climate change threatens the global operations of some businesses, such as when severe floods displace families and workers in areas where manufacturing facilities are located. Such climate-related risks, and their links to broader community needs, are just beginning to be understood by the private sector.

Businesses are also just beginning to identify adaptation growth opportunities as the demand for certain products and services increases. For example, increasing water scarcity will necessitate improved and more efficient irrigation technologies. As companies anticipate and respond to these shifts in demand they should look to partner with communities with an aim towards investing in local jobs and improving livelihoods.

PREP partners

The home of Budha Magarsa and Bati Saworo sits high on a plain far from any paved road. It's quiet here, save for the rustling of the wind, the chatter of birds and children, and a sound that's hard to peg at first--a whooshing, distant but persistent.

It's the Gurracho River, tumbling through boulders and swelling across the lowlands below, its roar muffled to a whisper-a whisper of possibility--by the brush climbing the steep banks.

In this drought-plagued corner of Ethiopia's West Arsi Zone, the river has long called out to small-scale farmers scratching a living from land fed only by rain. Without resources--money, engineering skills, heavy machinery--families in Dawe kebele had no easy way to tap the river's potential as an irrigation source even as they hungered for what it could bring them: reliable harvests, food on their tables, and desperately needed income for household essentials, like medical care and school fees.

But now, from the head works deep in the brush above where Magarsa and Saworo live with their nine children, a new network of pipes, concrete-lined canals, and earthen channels is funneling the precious Gurracho River directly to 404 farmers tilling 200 hectares of land, or 494 acres. The water is changing their lives.

With support from Oxfam America, the Rift Valley Children and Women development Organization, or RCWDO, began working on the Ejersa small-scale irrigation project in 2007 to help local families increase the income from their farms and expand their employment opportunities. Fed entirely by gravity, the new system is allowing farmers to cultivate their fields year round--whether it rains or not--and to grow food not only to eat but to sell.

"We are encouraging farmers to engage in the production of high-value crops for the market," says Hussien Dalecha, a program manager for RCWDO. "If you simply depend on traditional practices and growing maize and wheat one time a year on small plots, that's not sufficient for household consumption and expenses."

But with access to fertilizer, improved seeds, and most important of all, water, farming families can make their land highly productive--in some cases more than tripling the value of their yields. Coupled with the infrastructure, farmers have also received training in new growing techniques and the importance of diversifying their crops. At a neighborhood nursery, managed by the farmer's cooperative, neat rows of onions, peppers, kale, and tomatoes-among a variety of other edibles-serve as examples of what's possible. And farmers are taking the lessons to heart.

"We have farmland but lacked knowledge," said one farmer, Obbo Bshura. "As a result, we often couldn't feed our family on the meager yield of crops...Through the project we were taught irrigation methods and diversification techniques that were previously unpracticed in our community. Our production increased."

A new outlook

For Magarsa and Saworo, irrigation has brought their family a new sense of certainty, a feeling that, with hard work, their dreams do stand a chance of materializing.

"I have the confidence hereafter I can easily keep my children in school,"said Saworo, 45, who longed to be able to continue beyond the ninth grade himself. "I was eager to be a nurse or a doctor before. But it was a problem for me to continue my education. I didn't have any support from anywhere. If I can't achieve my ambitions, my child should go."

And one of them has. The couple's oldest son, Guta Bati, 22, graduated in July from Kuyera College with a nursing degree.

To help pay for his schooling, his parents sold a cow in December, one of the few that remained from their herd of 30. In recent years, drought has taken a toll on their livestock: Some of their animals died and they sold others when their crops failed and the family needed money to buy food.

But now, with river water promising more bountiful harvests, education for the rest of the children may not require selling valuable assets: their crops may be profitable enough to cover school fees.

The family has access to one hectare of irrigated land. By August, the corn Saworo had planted earlier was ready for harvest at a time when few other farmers around had any. In a bowl passed among visitors, a snack of roasted kernels--sweet, smoky, and a little crunchy--disappeared quickly. Saworo sold a quarter hectare (.62 acre) of corn for 7,592 birr, or about $446--a sizable sum during a season of the year when normally the family has little cash available.

"It's a good income for me," said Saworo. "This is really big money."

And he wasn't going to let it lie idle. He planned to buy improved seeds--tomatoes, beets, and cabbage--for his next crop.

Magarsa, too, has had significant success with the corn she's cultivated, seeing the yield from the half hectare (1.2 acres) she works climb from 12 quintals ( 2,645 pounds) in 2009 to 32.5 quintals (7,165 pounds) this year.

"I am totally in a different life," she said, "being able to feed my children and selling the remaining (corn) to support the children in education, planning for reinvestment."

Spreading the good

Nearby, at the home of Bushura Tasho and Jaware Aliyi, the irrigation project has helped boost income enough for the family to plan on putting a new roof on their hut. This one will be made of corrugated metal.

"Water can make a difference," said Aliyi. And not just for the farmers.

As the couple discussed the progress they were making, a woman with two donkeys wandered into their yard. She was there, she said, to purchase some of the surplus corn. Her plan was to buy about 150 birr worth (just shy of $9), load up the donkeys, port the corn to a distant community that had none, and sell it there for a slight profit of between 40 or 50 birr, or a little less than $3.

"The irrigation has already made a market here," said Dalecha, the project officer, noting how the benefits were reaching beyond farmers. Food, grown right here, was finding its way into the broader community--a community that in the past has had to depend on food aid during times of crisis.

"Relief food is aid is very expensive, "said Dalecha. "Instead of feeding the people, this kind of (irrigation) scheme is  very recommendable."

Oxfam America has been collaborating with communities and a variety of partners on projects like this since 1994, helping to provide families with water for their fields, for their animals, and for use in their homes. Oxfam’s new long-term water program, set to run through 2020, is now focusing on three regions: Amhara,  Tigray, and Oromia, of which the West Arsi Zone is a part. The program aims to strengthen the resilience of communities in the face of climate change by helping people access water and manage it sustainably for crop and livestock production.

 The Ejersa small-scale irrigation project in Dawe is also part of a larger undertaking called the Global Water Initiative, or GWI. Funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, it’s a coalition of seven international organizations, including Oxfam America, working on the challenges of providing clean water to some of the poorest people in the world for their homes and livelihoods.