Media Contacts: Jan Dragin - 24/7- (781) 925 1526; jdragin@gis.net Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, (212) 870-2676, lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Kenya's Drought: Church World Service's 'Sustainable, Holistic' Response Intended to Prevent Future Crises
NEW YORK / NAIROBI - Feb 9 - The failure of fall annual rains has triggered a food emergency in northern and eastern Kenya and set in motion a series of crises from malnutrition to loss of livestock. An estimated 2.5 million people are in need of emergency food aid.
Responding to the current and complex food emergency in northern and eastern Kenya, humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) says it is stressing a holistic and grassroots approach to mitigating the current crisis and preventing future crises.
Church World Service, headquartered in New York and with an East Africa regional office in Kenya, announced today that it is joining as lead agency with members of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) in a multi-agency response. The alliance has issued a joint fundraising appeal to respond to the drought and famine in a comprehensive way.
The regional drought has provoked crises from malnutrition to loss of livestock and clashes among nomadic tribes. An estimated 2.5 million people are in need of emergency food aid, almost 10% of Kenya's population. Church World Service Director of Emergency Response Donna Derr says CWS, along with ACT and Kenyan partners plan to carry out a 12- month schedule of relief and rehabilitation activities, ending January 2007. "We'll focus on supplementing and filling gaps in the support provided by the Kenyan government, the UN World Food Program, and other NGO efforts in specified districts," she said.
Derr says the program will include providing life-saving interventions to address immediate food and water needs in the most affected communities, food distribution, water tankering for domestic and livestock use, and borehole drilling and/ or repair in key specific areas of Mandera, Kajiado, Narok, Makueni, Kitui, Taita Taveta, Tana River and Turkana Districts.
"The need is serious, " Derr says, "although the Government of Kenya and aid agencies working there seem to have a comprehensive plan for responding in the immediate term and alleviating the most serious of the needs in a timely way that should mitigate family food and water needs in the short-term.
"But," says Derr, "The challenge will be finding ways between drought cycles to develop mitigation strategies in the affected areas that will give communities adequate local coping mechanisms should drought re-occur. Preventing future disaster is what's so vital about sustainable development," she said, "otherwise we just repeat the cycles of misery and helplessness."
Church World Service's Kenya programs focus on sustainable development with an emphasis on food and water security that are maintainable and replicable at grassroots levels.
The Church World Service Africa Initiative has introduced its signature Water for All programs and School Safe Zones program in Kenya. The school program, which advocates for at least one hot meal for each schoolchild, is currently piloted in ten Kenyan schools.
From Nairobi, Sam Mutua, emergency response officer for Church World
Service Kenya, said, "A serious drought is continuing and the situation is getting worse. We are addressing the whole question of availability and accessibility of food.
"For the last couple of years, some pockets of Kenya have been receiving poor rain. Some rains have been scanty; some areas have received none. People have been able to cope in the past, but these coping mechanisms have been eroded," he said.
Mutua said, "The worst came in December after the long rains did not come through last October and November. When farmers had already missed the short rains in April last year, the situation got worse."
The next rains are expected in March. Mutua said people are not optimistic anymore. "Even if it rains, it will take three months for farmers to see their crops mature. Also, it takes almost a year for livestock to rejuvenate. The farmers will take a long time to recuperate, to get back to normal life. So there is a long-term impact."
Mutua said that Church World Service has, so far, worked with partners in local initiatives including one at Kakuma refugee camp. Mutua said that today the host community of the refugee camp has gone into the camp to provide water and other resources.
The intention, says Mutua, "is to provide access to food and water and to bring water closer to families."
"We don't wish to see this happening in the same communities again. Our response will also consider the question of seeing which interventions worked better - to give people resilience when drought comes through," said Mutua.
In Kenya, Church World Service and its local and overseas partners help build the capacities of grass root churches and communities in order to equip them with the skills to monitor and respond within their constituencies to emergencies such as the current drought crisis. To support that effort, CWS has conducted Disaster Management Training (DMT) workshops targeting members of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK).
Church World Service is a global relief, development, human rights advocacy and refugee assistance agency operating in more than 80 countries and is supported in part in the U.S. by 35 member denominations.
EDITORS, NOTE: Please include in your listings of responding agencies:
Contributions to support the Kenyan food emergency crisis may be sent Church World Service 2006 Kenya Drought Appeal # 641-G; (Reference: ACT #AFKE61) P.O. Box 968 Elkhart, IN 46515 Contributions may also be made online, or by calling 800.297.1516, ext. 222.
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