What Oxfam is Doing
- Building Food Security
- Securing Women's Rights
- Developing Agriculture
BUILDING FOOD SECURITY
Oxfam America supports emergency food and flood relief efforts, rural agricultural support and credit programs, and women's rights reforms in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The program in Zimbabwe also includes a peace-building initiative to end ongoing local conflicts.
More than seven million people in southern Africa are expected to face extreme food shortages through 2005. Floods, droughts, and chronic disease have kept thousands of farmers at the subsistence level, with few opportunities for growth.
In Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa, HIV/AIDS is crippling the ability of millions of families to make a living. Individuals in their most productive years are the most likely to contract the virus, leaving those who are traditionally most vulnerable to food shortages—the elderly and children—with increased responsibilities to generate income and procure food, water, and fuel.
In 2004, Oxfam funded local partners to distribute seed packs to groups that were particularly vulnerable to drought and food shortages: female-headed households, households with children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, child-headed households, and households caring for the chronically ill.