It is a stark example of the impact of HIV and AIDS on rural Zimbabwe. In addition to her own 10 children, Mrs. Nyuwani, 48, and her recently disable husband took in another dozen children. "The 12 came here because their parents passed away and they were living as street children. So my husband I brought them here," she said. "Six are of my late sister, others are my brother-and sister-in-law's kids, and the grandchildren of my sister."
This would be a tremendous challenge for anyone. But Nyuwani has a thoughtful, peaceful air about her as she takes a deep breath and describes how the family copes: "At first it was disturbing, because I thought about where to get food for all these children," she said. "But now I am used to looking after them? I treat them all the same, and share the food equally."
Survival comes down to just that: food. Nyuwani has seven hectares (about 17 acres) of farmland at her disposal, and is an experienced farmer. "I manage all this by farming, and the older kids help in the fields," she said. "During the rainy season there is a lot of work to be done, because I have to tend to the crops and the children as well."
Lack of cash and time to look for farming supplies like seeds and fertilizer make it extremely difficult for Nyuwani to plant and harvest enough to sustain the family. These constraints and the number of AIDS orphans on the Nyuwani homestead made her a candidate for the seed distribution project implemented by the Single Parents and Widows Support Network, in partnership with Oxfam America. Single Parents gave Nyuwani some seeds in November 2005, and by the end of May 2006 she had a decent harvest: she estimated growing about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of groundnuts, 100 kilograms (440 pounds) of corn, and 250 kilograms (550 pounds) of sorghum.
This was an improvement over previous years when lack of seeds as well as rain diminished the agricultural yield for the Nyumanis. But the food won't last forever. "I got a better harvest this year, but it won't last until the next season since I have such a big family," Nyuwani said. "For us to survive, to the next [growing] season, two of my daughters will pan for gold in river beds near here. We will also cut back on our meals to one or two a day. We will eat sadza [corn meal] and okra—that's what we have here—no tea, no sugar, no bread. During this [rainy] season we also have some pumpkins and cow peas, but we don't usually eat them apart from the rainy season."
Oxfam America and the Single Parents and Widow Support Network are exploring possibilities for a winter garden project that would help families grow vegetables over the winter. This would help bridge the food deficit many families will be experiencing before the end of the next growing season, and improve nutrition for families taking care of chronically ill people.
For now, the food is sustaining the homestead. "I appreciate the seeds I got from Single Parents," Nyuwani said. "I was very happy with the sorghum and maize seeds I received. I am also happy with the groundnuts."
In addition to improving their diet, groundnuts are also an economic opportunity for a family low on cash with a lot of kids who need to go to school. "If you can grow more of these to sell some, you can get some money," Nyuwani said. "Some of the children were chased away from school due to lack of school fees, but I sold some groundnuts and paid for six who are now at school."
]]>September is the end of winter in Zimbabwe. After four years of erratic rains and low yields, many farmers were desperate as they headed into another growing season. Most had no money to buy seeds, fuel, or fertilizer—or if they did these essential farming supplies were simply not available due to the economic crisis gripping Zimbabwe.
Many families in Mudzi were caring for people living with HIV and AIDS, which is infecting more than 20 percent of Zimbabwe's population. This took away the time they needed to travel in search of seeds to plant and grow corn.
"For the last five years, few had been able to produce a crop," Mariga said. "People were surviving on wild fruits, and they did not have access to any grains or other sources of food."
Mariga, Oxfam America's humanitarian program officer, had no time to waste. He immediately started working with representatives from a local development organization called Single Parents and Widows Support Network, carrying out a rapid assessment of the most vulnerable families. Coordinating with special committees comprised of local volunteers, Oxfam and Single Parents surveyed the population in Mudzi and identified 5,000 families that needed help the most.
"Our criteria prioritized families with chronically ill family members," Mariga said, "Households taking care of more than two or three orphans, women-headed households, child-headed households, and those with older grandparents taking care of the young."
"Mudzi is a dry area of Zimbabwe," Mariga explained on a visit the following May. "It only gets between 300 and 350 millimeters (1.2 to 1.5 inches) of rain during the growing season. It's not ideal for agriculture and there are a lot of people living here who have to scrounge for a living, and grow what crops they can."
In consultation with farmers, Oxfam and Single Parents devised an agricultural support program that would get families the seeds they needed to plant before the rains started in November. The priority was on drought-resistant small grains like sorghum, as well as corn, pumpkins, and groundnuts (peanuts).
It was a race against time: Oxfam America and Single Parents procured the seeds and distributed them to the 5,000 project participants just in time for the rains. Suddenly, the most vulnerable families had a glimmer of hope.
"The seed package was really well received by the farmers," Mariga said. "They had something to grow, they would not have to scrounge for money to buy these inputs, and they could use their money for school fees, and health care for those who are chronically ill."
By the middle of April, the results were clear: farmers grew substantially more than in previous years, and would have more food to eat in the coming winter. "Our final round of monitoring indicated that about 40 percent of the participants harvested a crop that would sustain them until December," Mariga said. "Another 20 percent will have food until the next harvest in May 2007. This is a milestone for an area that has not been able to produce much in the way of crops for the last four to five years—it is a real achievement."
Bridget Masarauru, the program director for Single Parents, said that the agriculture program is making a big difference for the people they work with in Mudzi. In the previous years of low rainfall, Masarauru said it was common to see people faint during community meetings as the lack of food caught up with them. "People can now confidently say that they can have two or three meals a day, at least during the rainy season," Masarauru said. "This is something really tangible we can do."
David Kanjere, the elected councilor for Masahwa ward in Mudzi, was enthusiastic about the seed program. On a late-May tour of Masahwa, the second-largest ward in Mudzi with more than 24,000 people, Kanjere said this year's harvest was significantly larger thanks to the seeds and a bit of rain. "People started harvesting last month, and they are still harvesting now. Right now, people's lives are changing with this yield."
Oxfam and Single Parents are now turning their attention to helping farmers in Mudzi to store their seeds for the next season, and create ways for them to sell or exchange seeds and make them more widely available to other farmers. They will also look at ways to help the minority of participants who had trouble maximizing the potential of their seed basket in the 2005-2006 growing season.
]]>The matriarch of the family, Chisero's mother, was in Harare, 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) away getting medical treatment. She has been living with HIV for seven years'a long time for a farmer in rural Zimbabwe to survive with HIV—which makes Minor Chisero a very good daughter indeed. There is a lot of pride in Minor's voice when she says, "Yes, I am the one who takes care of her."
It is a close-knit group. "We work as a family in the fields, and we eat as a family," Chisero explained. "It is a little better now, we can eat three meals a day, compared to last year when we were only eating once a day."
The increase in food is due to an increase in crops they grew this season with seeds supplied by the Single Parents and Widows Support Network, through a grant from Oxfam America. The family had recently harvested five 50-kilo bags of groundnuts (about 550 pounds), seven bags (770 pounds) of sorghum. They were still harvesting their corn in late May, and were hoping to have as much as five bags.
This 2005-06 harvest was a lot stronger than their 2004-05 yield, when they grew only one bag of corn, three bags of sorghum, and two bags of groundnuts.
The increase in groundnuts this year is not only helping their diet, but their income as well. It is also making it possible for the children to attend school. Chisero and her sisters are roasting and grinding part of their groundnut supply to make peanut butter, which they are selling to cover their health care and school fees for three of their children. "All of the children here are in school," Minor said. "We pay the school fees by selling groundnuts, maize, and livestock."
School fees are 1.5 million Zimbabwean dollars per year, or about $US 15 at the official exchange rate. Peanut butter demands a high price in Mudzi: Chisero said they can get about a million Zim dollars for a liter of peanut butter (about $US 10 a pint).
Minor and her family are making the best of a tough situation. Although they are eating more than they were last year at this time, their meals consist primarily of sadza, or ground corn meal, the main staple food in Zimbabwe. As Chisero puts it, "Our meals are a little bit better—three meals a day, but it is still sadza in the morning, sadza at noon, and sadza at night. It is not a balanced diet."
But in between the sadza and peanut butter revenues, the family is coping for now. Chisero expects their food supply to last through September.
"This program helped us a lot," Chisero said. "If it was not for this seed we got last year we would not have been able to plant our fields, because we have no money."
]]>Last September, coffee farmers from seven countries traveled to Salvador, Brazil, to add their voices to the World Coffee Conference, a special meeting of the International Coffee Organization. The ICO is an intergovernmental organization that brings together coffee-producing and coffee-consuming countries.
The World Coffee Conference kicked off Oxfam America's campaign to influence the next International Coffee Agreement. That agreement was a key issue at the ICO meeting in London this past week, but no specific proposals were forthcoming to solve those ongoing economic problems.
Oxfam has been working to make the agreement better reflect the needs and concerns of small-scale farmers who are struggling with the changing face of the coffee crisis.
"I wonder if the participants at the World Coffee Conference know what the coffee crisis has truly meant for producers," said Pradeep Nandipur of the Karnataka Growers Federation in India.
"In my region, farmers committed suicide because they could see no way out of their mounting debt. They had no way to repay it because their income was gone."
To survive these challenges, farmers and farmworkers said they require some stability, the kind that only comes through long-term capital investment, access to markets, and political representation.
When the international price of coffee dropped to historic lows in 2001, family farmers in places like Guatemala and Ethiopia fell into crisis.
With a glut of coffee on the market, many couldn't find buyers for their crops. Others couldn't pull in enough profits to pay off their farming expenses and feed their children.
Many farmers who survived the price drop were members of fair trade cooperatives. By agreeing to certain principles, such as transparency with members, democratic elections, and setting aside a percentage of profits for the community, cooperative members received a guaranteed minimum price for their crop.
"When the prices were low, fair trade was the best market we had," said Moise Coz, administrator of the IJATZ coop in Guatemala.
Farmers who were part of fair trade cooperatives said they made enough money to buy food, clothe and educate their children, and buy more farmland. Some coops even had enough money to buy mills to process their own coffee or to help local schools buy chalkboards and desks.
But even as farmers were counting the benefits of their fair trade premium, the crisis was changing. The price of coffee began to recover, creating competition between the coops and local middlemen representing importers or mega-roasters.
Some farmers now find themselves in an awkward position. They can sell their coffee to their cooperative for less and wait a few months for payment. Or they can sell to middlemen, called coyotes, willing to pay a higher up-front price.
The cooperatives try to remain competitive by using some of their savings to pay the difference between their price and the coyotes' price. But many fall short.
They need to use their savings to pay the administrative staff or electricity bill. In the end, the best thing cooperatives can do is try to remind farmers that what goes up must come down. When the international price drops, the cooperatives will be the only ones offering a price safety net and specialized training.
"We explain why they aren't receiving the money up front. We have costs to pay off," states Guillermo Campa, President of the IJATZ cooperative.
"We tell them that they need to think about the future. Think about the price dropping like it did in the past. If they work with fair trade, they can have a stable price."
But that argument doesn't always work. "People who live day to day can't just depend on what happened in the past," said Carlos Reynoso, manager of Manos Campesinas cooperative in Guatemala.
So how do coffee cooperatives respond? How do they get their members to sell them enough coffee so they can fulfill their contracts with importers and roasters? And how does the International Coffee Organization help?
Stronger cooperatives are more competitive in a fluctuating market. In order to get there, cooperatives need access to debt refinancing, low-interest loans for working capital, long-term capital investment, information, and markets. With a voice at the ICO, small-scale farmers and their cooperatives can advocate for these interests.
At the World Coffee Conference, Oxfam America and its partners presented coffee producing and consuming countries with a declaration articulating the needs of small-scale farmers and their cooperatives. The declaration calls for these issues to be addressed in the next International Coffee Agreement.
This is just one component of a strategy to give the world's 25 million coffee farmers a real chance to do what they've done for generations—and turn a profit that makes it all worthwhile.
"We need to take advantage of this historic opportunity," said Seth Petchers, Coffee Program Manager at Oxfam America. "We can use these negotiations to put measures in place that better address what these farmers face."
]]>The discussions on the future of the International Coffee Agreement present an historic opportunity to address the ongoing crisis facing smallholder coffee farmers and farmworkers by contributing to sustainable coffee supply chains. At the 2nd World Coffee Conference in September 2005 several organizations presented the International Coffee Organisation and its delegates with the Carta de Salvador—the Salvador Declaration, which stressed the ongoing effects of the coffee crisis facing small-scale family farmers and farmworkers. This paper calls on International Coffee Organization members to support small-scale farmers and farmworker organizations by ensuring space for their direct participation in international debate, creating mechanisms that enhance the availability of market information to small-scale farmers, and maximizing opportunities to develop cohesive international strategies to provide technical support, access to credit, and direct access to markets.
]]>Five men from the Community Cooperative for Rural Development, or CCRD, an Oxfam partner organization, stood along the mill's perimeter, watching it work. Serious and proud, they admired their prize: the only certified organic rice mill in the country.
Cambodian rice farmers, long vulnerable to fluctuating prices and heavy regional competition, are looking to organic rice to help them carve out a niche in the market. As eating healthily has become more popular around the world, so has organic food. Organic products sell for a higher price than conventionally farmed food. In a country where more than a third of the population lives on less than $1 a day and more than half depends on agriculture, the organic advantage could translate into a reliable and steady income.
"The momentum is really growing," said Le Thi Nguyet Minh, an Oxfam America program officer in the East Asia office. "We need to maintain it."
Maintaining the organic momentum requires establishing farming cooperatives, which are equipped to work in the organic market. This transition represents a huge practical and emotional leap for many Khmer farmers.
The bloody civil war and subsequent genocide that ravaged Cambodia left many Khmer people distrustful of both their neighbors—and any sort of collective work, said Yann Omer-Kassin, an Oxfam Quebec field advisor supporting CCRD.
Even the words "farming cooperative" pose a problem. In Khmer, they translate into "work camp," a term that conjures up painful fears or memories of Khmer Rouge death camps. Many of the people Kassin talked to in Pursat said they were wary of joining a farming coop "because it's linked to a horrible past."
Because of these cultural sensitivities, CCRD staff work slowly and patiently to convert farmers to organic production. They spend much of their time simply building trust in the cooperative concept. They point to the tangible benefits of organic production.
Farmers are encouraged to use animal manure instead of chemical fertilizers—a requirement of organic certification. The resulting savings can be used—to grow other crops, or send children to school. If farmers use natural fertilizer, they can also prevent illness. Many farmers and farm workers get sick because they can't read the labels on the chemicals they use. Many of the chemicals are so dangerous they're prohibited in other countries.
Tang Eum, 47, a rice farmer in Pursat, said she began farming organic rice three years ago. She said natural fertilizer doesn't always produce as much rice as chemical fertilizer. But she's willing to accept that tradeoff if it means her family and friends won't get sick.
CCRD has converted at least 75 of the 1,500 farmers in its collective to farm organic. Their support is crucial. Many of the rice farmers face the same challenges organic and fair trade coffee farmers saw when they first learned about the new model. Many have farmed small plots with chemicals for generations. They need help learning new agriculture techniques so that they can someday grow as much rice as they had before.
Then they need help getting the experience, technical assistance, and market access to pull it all off.
It is a challenging task, CCRD workers said. But knowing what they do about the potential benefits keeps them motivated. Eventually they want to help local farmers not only farm organically, but take the next logical step, and sell to the fair trade market.
Fair Trade Certified™ products are high quality and grown through practices friendly to the environment. Farmers receive a minimum price even when the market price is low. According to a 2005 market study, if farmers made the transition from conventional growing to fair trade organic they could see their profits more than double.
Sitting at a wood table outside her house in Pursat, Tang Eum said she knows what she wants to do with that extra money. A mother and a businesswoman, she would use it to support her family and sell her rice.
"I want to use the money to send my children to school," she said. "And I want to buy a moto to go to the market in town."
]]>The sound of the rain woke him up. He nudged his wife, asking if she heard it too. Pregnant and tired, she told him to go back to sleep.
"When I woke up again, I opened the door and mud was everywhere. All the kids were screaming," Carlos recalled in February. "We ran from the house, with mud up to our waists."
As the Ajznels sprinted for shelter, the rain poured. Boulders tumbled. Mudslides cut through the earth. Hurricane Stan unloaded on Guatemala, reworking the landscape, and leaving some of its deepest scars on the country's small-scale coffee farms.
Many farmers, like Ajznel, lost their homes and the means to support their families. Coffee trees were infected by fungus, or buried under mud and rocks. Individual coffee farmers said the storm wiped out between 25 and 100 percent of their coffee production.
Five months after the storm, Oxfam America staffers traveled to Guatemala to assess the damage and determine what it would take to rebuild the lives of small-scale coffee farmers.
"Looking at the devastation, you realized what used to be there, that it was someone's income. Then you thought about what it would take to bring it all back," said Seth Petchers, Oxfam America's coffee program manager.
Guatemala's volcanoes and rolling hills provided a perfect funnel for the rain and mud from the hurricane. Much of what was dislodged finally settled on coffee farming communities, located in the high elevations that produce quality beans.
Members of an Oxfam partner cooperative in La Unidad, a village at the base of a mountain in the Tajumulco region, found their community split down the middle by the hurricane. Two concrete bridges that had connected the village collapsed during the storm, taking some riverside homes with them.
"When it started to rain and the river swelled, we left our house knowing that something was going to happen," said Lidia Perez Chavez, 22, a member of the APECAFORM cooperative. "We only took the children and the clothes we were wearing. Afterward, we had lots of trouble. We could only eat once a day because we had so little firewood."
In San Lucas Tolimàn, a community near Lake Atitlan, Don Antonio Chavajay Ixtamer estimated that 80 percent of his land was affected. Walking through his property, he pointed to newly formed ravines, uprooted shade trees, and coffee trees buried under mud, boulders, and silt.
Ixtamer, who is the president of a coffee coop called La Voz, said he intends to replant. But it will take at least four years for the new trees to bear fruit. And while he and his family are doing the recovery work on their own land, they'll lose out on the supplemental income they would have earned doing off-season work in the city or on someone else's farm.
But at least Ixtamer has some coffee trees left to harvest. Some farmers lost everything and were forced to flee to Mexico and the United States.
What will it take to recover? Farmers say they need to replace what was lost—and prepare for future disasters.
Oxfam America will use a $100,000 grant to help partners repair damaged land, provide technical assistance for rehabilitation projects, repair equipment, and offset the dues some coops can't pay because of reduced profits after the hurricane.
The relief work will be coordinated through partner organizations Manos Campesinas and CRECER, which will hire appropriate staff, help farmers plant coffee saplings, make and spread organic fertilizer, build drainage barriers, treat water, and repair coffee mills.
It will mean a lot of work during the next few months. But for many small-scale coffee farmers, there's simply no alternative.
"We need to replant," said Don Juan Tacaxoy Botan, president of ANMSI coop. "We don't have any other option."
]]>Here in central Illinois, three farmers from Surin province were face-to-face with one of the major threats behind the US-Thai Free Trade Agreement: subsidized US agribusiness.
"Fifty years ago this whole area used to be small family-operated farms, now mostly all of the land is either owned or leased to large agricultural corporations," said Thomas Spaulding, a farmer at Angelic Organic Farm, which stands as a small reminder of traditional agriculture in a sea of monocropped and chemically farmed fields.
"This is what we're afraid of happening to our farms in northeast Thailand," replied Kanya Onsri, a small-scale rice farmer from Surin province.
Phakphum Inpaen, Onsri, and Arat Saengubon exchanged hardship stories with Thomas Spaulding as part of a speaking tour of the US organized by the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE), a US-based non-profit and Oxfam partner organization started by former students of a study-abroad program based in Khon Kaen.
During the three-week tour, they spoke tomore than 1,000 people about the threat the US-Thai FTA negotiations hold for Thai small-scale farmers. They told audiences that the US-Thai FTA is poised to allow unnaturally cheap products to flood Thai markets drowning out Thai production, endangering Thailand's biodiversity, and forcing Thailand to accept the importation and production of unlabeled genetically modified food products.
According to the Alternative Agriculture Network, approximately 400,000 farming families have been affected by cheap imports of corn and soybeans since Thailand joined the World Trade Organization in 1994. Thai farmers are worried that the US-Thai FTA will worsen this problem by increasing imports of US-grown corn and soybeans which can sell at artificially low prices because of the approximately $50 billion dollars the US government uses to subsidize corn and soybean production from 1995-2003.
While in Washington DC, the Thai delegation spoke with two Mexican farmers who were raising awareness about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which illustrates the impact of signing a free trade agreement with the US. Pedro Jose Torres Ochoa, a Mexican corn farmer, said that since Mexico signed NAFTA in 1994 more then two million Mexican farming families have migrated from their farms as a result of artificially cheap corn imports from the US.
Inpaen, Onsri, and Saengubon also expressed Thai farmer's opposition to the intellectual property rights (IPR) package favored by the US, which allows life forms, such as plants and seeds, to be patented by multinational corporations. The IPR system favors technologically advanced countries without requiring companies to secure prior approval for experimenting on another country's biodiversity or to share benefits with the country of origin.
"This allows US companies to profit off of the rich biodiversity of Thailand," said Arat Saengubon.
Thai farmers are worried that the IPR package put forward by the US will weaken Thailand's ability to protect its most prized plant and seed varieties including Jasmine rice.
"If we lose Jasmine rice then we are losing the most important resource of the poor, we'll lose our livelihood," said Phakphum Inpaen.
The tour participants also worry about the spread of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Thailand due to pressure from US negotiators. Thai farmers fear that the two laws currently prohibiting commercial production of GMO seeds and requiring the labeling of GMO food products in Thailand are in danger of being repealed in exchange for increased market access for Thai-produced chicken and shrimp. An increase in GMO foods, argue the farmers, will not benefit small-scale farmers, but instead will give large agribusinesses more ability to control the food chain.
During the tour, the Thai farmers met with various American groups resisting free trade agreements.
"Free trade is destroying communities in Thailand just like it is destroying communities here in Maine," said Laura Millay, Project Coordinator for Food and Medicine, a US-based workers rights organization campaigning against free trade agreements. Millay estimates that approximately 20,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Maine since 2000 as a result of free trade policies.
Oxfam America provided funding to ENGAGE to support the farmer's tour and their work educating Americans about the US-Thai Free Trade Agreement. The goal was to encourage a free-flowing exchange of information about shared experiences.
Throughout the six-city tour, Americans asked how they could help Thai farmers. Onsri, Inpaen, and Saengubon urged students, consumers, religious groups, non-profit organizations, and elected officials to call for a more democratic negotiation process for both Thai and US citizens. Currently free trade agreements can be ratified in Thailand by the Prime Minister without ever passing parliament.
]]>"The President's budget calls for stricter agricultural payment caps is an important reform of an outdated agricultural subsidy program -- rife with abuse and loopholes and hurts small farmers here and abroad," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America.
"The US government spends billion of dollars each year on farm payments that are heavily concentrated in large-scale commercial operations, distorting international markets and causing controversy and unfairness in global trade."
Although the subsidy program was originally created during the Great Depression as a safety net for farmers, the system has evolved into a program that benefits those already with an advantage, encourages overproduction and leads to export dumping and depressed prices.
"Today's proposal signals the Administration's commitment to reforming trade distorting subsidies," continued Offenheiser. "The ball is squarely in Congress' court to deliver a fair and sustainable farm program, not just for the US but for the world."
Oxfam also welcomed the President's proposal to make food aid funds available as cash contributions to make emergency assistance faster, cheaper and more appropriate. Shipping US commodities can cost a lot more and can take months to reach those in need. In a world where more than 850 million people are chronically hungry, food aid is vitally important to humanitarian activities. However, restricting food aid to in-kind donations limits the effectiveness of the US food aid program.
"Humanitarian responders need to have flexibility to respond to needs on the ground by the fastest and most cost-efficient means possible, be it in-kind or locally purchased food aid," said Offenheiser. "Having cash contributions available for local or regional purchases could increase the speed and volume of food available to address a crisis and would enable us to feed many more people."
The President also requested an additional $18 billion for rebuilding the Gulf Coast through a supplemental to the FY2007 budget. With nearly 200,000 homes damaged in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the scale of the devastation dwarfs the resources homeowners and insurance companies have to make it right. To date, the generosity of federal support has not been equal to the severity of the crisis. The federal government must invest in housing solutions if we want to see the return of these vibrant American communities.
"An additional $18 billion for rebuilding the Gulf Coast is welcome news as continued financial support from the federal government is critical if the region is to have hope of recovery," said Offenheiser. "However, the details of the plan for spending these funds will reveal if the Administration is committed to addressing the vast and urgent housing needs on the hurricane-devastated region."
Although the President's budget recommends increases in Refugee and Migration Assistance and the Millennium Challenge Account, it also recommends cuts in core foreign assistance, such as Child Survival, Development Assistance and funding to international organizations.
"Over his presidency, President Bush has made great strides to increase foreign aid, so today's announcement of cuts to core development funding is a big disappointment," said Offenheiser. "Although the US is the largest donor in the world, and US assistance had been on the increase, the US still lags behind other developed countries in that our contributions are small compared to the size of our federal budget and economy."
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The stories that follow testify to the fact that aid can be used effectively—in Africa and beyond. By investing directly in people, by helping them gain access to education, credit, and natural resources, by challenging the policies that perpetuate poverty, Oxfam puts the systems in place that can end poverty. Without this work—and your support—people remain hungry, poor, and lacking meaningful ways to change their lives.
Together, we have the chance to make that change.
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