Reverend Sally Foster Fulton, Church of Scotland, ‘ACT Now for Climate Justice’ Ambassador
Reverend Sally Foster Fulton, Church of Scotland, ‘ACT Now for Climate Justice’ Ambassador
Aaron Tate from ACT member CWS talks about the influx of Burundian refugees in Tanzania and the ACT Appeal
Araga Danrani, 75, (pictured above: LWR/Emily Sollie) is a farmer living in Niger, in the West African Sahel. Over the past few years Niger and surrounding countries have experienced a combination of drought and rising food prices that has left more than 18.7 million people at risk for hunger.
Not long ago Mr. Danrani had to leave whole fields on his farm vacant because he couldn’t afford enough seeds to plant them. Now he’s participating in ACT member Lutheran World Relief’s Resilience Plus project, aimed at helping farmers in West Africa support their families, continue to produce crops and become resilient against changing weather patterns.
Across West Africa, the Resilience Plus project has reached more than 79,000 people with agricultural training that will help farmers grow food despite the challenging conditions. In partnership with a local cooperative of more than 7,800 farmers, Lutheran World Relief has distributed fast-growing, disease-resistant millet seeds so that farmers can continue to plant this traditional dietary staple.
Lutheran World Relief has also provided cash-for-work projects that give families the opportunity to earn income for doing work that will help preserve natural resources.
After receiving an allotment of improved millet seeds, Araga planted his vacant fields. From an original distribution of nearly 18 pounds of seeds, he harvested 1,239 pounds of millet. He saved seeds from his harvest for replanting, and expects to harvest even more this year.
“If not for this project,” he says “my family and I would have had to leave because of hunger.”
Thankfully Araga does not have to leave his farm in search of work and is able to stay on his farm, work hard and make a living to support his family.
Learn more about Lutheran World Relief’s work in resilience.
Araga Danrani, 75, (pictured above: LWR/Emily Sollie) is a farmer living in Niger, in the West African Sahel. Over the past few years Niger and surrounding countries have experienced a combination of drought and rising food prices that has left more than 18.7 million people at risk for hunger.
Not long ago Mr. Danrani had to leave whole fields on his farm vacant because he couldn’t afford enough seeds to plant them. Now he’s participating in ACT member Lutheran World Relief’s Resilience Plus project, aimed at helping farmers in West Africa support their families, continue to produce crops and become resilient against changing weather patterns.
Across West Africa, the Resilience Plus project has reached more than 79,000 people with agricultural training that will help farmers grow food despite the challenging conditions. In partnership with a local cooperative of more than 7,800 farmers, Lutheran World Relief has distributed fast-growing, disease-resistant millet seeds so that farmers can continue to plant this traditional dietary staple.
Lutheran World Relief has also provided cash-for-work projects that give families the opportunity to earn income for doing work that will help preserve natural resources.
After receiving an allotment of improved millet seeds, Araga planted his vacant fields. From an original distribution of nearly 18 pounds of seeds, he harvested 1,239 pounds of millet. He saved seeds from his harvest for replanting, and expects to harvest even more this year.
“If not for this project,” he says “my family and I would have had to leave because of hunger.”
Thankfully Araga does not have to leave his farm in search of work and is able to stay on his farm, work hard and make a living to support his family.
Learn more about Lutheran World Relief’s work in resilience.
Araga Danrani, 75, (pictured above: LWR/Emily Sollie) is a farmer living in Niger, in the West African Sahel. Over the past few years Niger and surrounding countries have experienced a combination of drought and rising food prices that has left more than 18.7 million people at risk for hunger.
Not long ago Mr. Danrani had to leave whole fields on his farm vacant because he couldn’t afford enough seeds to plant them. Now he’s participating in ACT member Lutheran World Relief’s Resilience Plus project, aimed at helping farmers in West Africa support their families, continue to produce crops and become resilient against changing weather patterns.
Across West Africa, the Resilience Plus project has reached more than 79,000 people with agricultural training that will help farmers grow food despite the challenging conditions. In partnership with a local cooperative of more than 7,800 farmers, Lutheran World Relief has distributed fast-growing, disease-resistant millet seeds so that farmers can continue to plant this traditional dietary staple.
Lutheran World Relief has also provided cash-for-work projects that give families the opportunity to earn income for doing work that will help preserve natural resources.
After receiving an allotment of improved millet seeds, Araga planted his vacant fields. From an original distribution of nearly 18 pounds of seeds, he harvested 1,239 pounds of millet. He saved seeds from his harvest for replanting, and expects to harvest even more this year.
“If not for this project,” he says “my family and I would have had to leave because of hunger.”
Thankfully Araga does not have to leave his farm in search of work and is able to stay on his farm, work hard and make a living to support his family.
Learn more about Lutheran World Relief’s work in resilience.
Her assortment includes salt, onions, Maggi flavour cubes, little yellow peppers and cooking oil. Pointy plastic bags with the yellow liquid are shining in the afternoon sun. Once in a while, a customer comes to buy one of the little spice bags at Cecile Endamag’s (pictured above with her nephew photo: LWF/C. Kästner) market stand in Gondje refugee settlement, Chad. “People here miss the spices,” she says. “We receive cereals and basic food but nothing to make it taste good. Spices sell the best.”
Endamag is a refugee from the Central African Republic (CAR), whose border is only 60km from the settlement. Back home, she had a small food shop and her own warehouse with a good stock of supplies.
“When the war started, we went to hide in the bush,” she recalls. “After a while, that became too dangerous and exhausting, so we fled.”
Endamag lost her husband in the war. She arrived in Chad in 2008.
A year ago, ACT member Lutheran World Federation (LWF) helped her open the business with a cash grant. “I do not earn much but the small money already makes life here a bit better,” she says. “I now have the means to buy school supplies and clothes for my children, and some additional food.”
Like her, 600 CAR refugees and vulnerable people living in the host community have received cash grants to open a business.
“We encourage them to form groups,” says Marie-Grace Longaye, LWF supervisor for income-generating activities in Gore. “This way, refugees form communities organize themselves and ideally also hold each other responsible for paying back the loan.”
The situation of Endamag’s family is what humanitarian agencies call a protracted refugee situation. Because of recurring conflict in their home country, people are forced to live abroad for years, sometimes decades. They build semi-permanent houses of clay with thatched roofs, farm a little piece of land allocated to them by the host country, and wait for peace and stability in their place of origin.
Some of the CAR refugees arrived way back in 2003 – their children know only the refugee settlement. The latest group arrived in 2014, when Anti-Balaka militia staged a coup against the Muslim president of CAR and started a war against the Muslim population. Many of them are Chad migrant workers in CAR. Although considered “returnees”, they have lost their homes and come to a country foreign to them.
Helping people create a business, therefore, is much more than a means to supply them with additional money.
“It gives them purpose again,” Longaye says. “They have seen terrible things and lost family members. Many women lost their husbands. Helping them to take life into their own hands again is also a way to help them heal.”
Small loan groups are meant to provide occupation, stability and a new community. This is most visible in the “Groupement Garage”.
As the name suggests, the group used their loan to open a business in car repairs, painting, welding and carrying out general metal work.
“We were the first to repair a car in the region,” says Amidou, the group’s president. “We now receive requests from people in nearby host communities who wish to join us.”
The group is integrating young and old, making use of a wide variety of talents. The youngest apprentice in training is Abulai Amadou, a 15-year-old boy with a hearing disability. “His mother brought him,” president Amidou explains. “Because of his hearing problem, he cannot go to school, so she asked us to train him.”
The oldest group member is Mamadou Abu, 53, the treasurer and unofficial teacher of the group. “We wanted someone old and wise to handle the money. We also come to him for advice and to train the young ones,” Amidou says. “He used to train apprentices in CAR.”
“This group gave me the opportunity to learn something,” Amadou Soufa, 22, says. When he arrived, he was still a teenager, with no hope of further education. Group members trained him in various aspects of car repair and metal work. Now he plans to one day open his own business.
“It is important to train the young people,” Amidou says. “The situation is psychologically difficult. We have been here since February. After all we have seen, there is no hope of going back anytime soon. We did not just want to sit around and do nothing.”
In the heart of South America, the Gran Chaco covers almost 1 million square kilometres. It is the biggest dry forest in the world, spanning territories in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The region has some of the most acute levels of poverty in Latin America.
Across the three countries in this area, two ACT members are working on a rights-based development programme with indigenous people. The region, isolated from the large cities, has weak communication systems. Consequently, abuses of indigenous rights and human rights are often unreported, and impunity for these crimes is widespread. Environmental destruction is also largely uncontrolled. The result is that climate conditions in
the region are increasingly unpredictable and humanitarian emergencies caused by long periods of drought or extreme flooding are now common.
Twenty-five indigenous groups live in the Gran Chaco, including the Guaraní, Wichi, Qom and Enxet Sur communities – groups who lived for centuries as semi- nomadic hunter-gatherers before losing their land to non-indigenous farmers and cattle ranchers.
Food security, empowerment
A long-term ACT programme has been supporting indigenous people in the Gran Chaco as they reclaim their ancestral lands, improve their food security and nutrition, and empower indigenous women, young people and organisations working against poverty. The programme provides legal support and accompaniment to communities in their land claims process, and has seen great success in one of the largest claims in all of South America, involving 15,000 people in 12 communities.
The end of a 20-year struggle
In June 2014, Argentina signed a decree handing over a legal land title to those communities, ending a 20-year struggle and beginning a new phase of work, focused on sustainable development projects. Over the past nine years of the programme, indigenous communities have recovered 1,788 square miles of their ancestral land. ACT members are now working with communities on sustainable development and land management for these re-
acquired lands.
The programme begins with participatory mapping in the communities, collecting detailed information about natural resources such as water, what land available for hunting and gathering, and areas of potential tension. Participatory approaches in community-based organisations help prevent conflicts over resources. They ensure that development meets the needs and priorities of the communities and makes good use of local resources and knowledge.
Indigenous groups in the Chaco region are achieving improved food security as a direct result of their work with ACT, such as resources for kitchen gardens and honey production to improve nutrition. Support for small handicraft businesses is improving income streams and livelihoods, and particularly empowering women. The ACT programme also works to protect at-risk human rights defenders, such as community leaders working non-violently for justice and against inequality in the Chaco.
Since the beginning of 2015 a mass influx of asylum seekers could be noticed in Hungary. According to latest data the number of asylum seekers has constantly risen from a few thousand in 2014 to around 83,000 until July 2015. Migrants are arriving from countries of armed conflict, deep poverty, or social unrest, like Northern and Middle Africa, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Almost all of them are coming through the Balkan (Greece, Macedonia, Serbia), approximately 1,500 persons/day cross the border, authorities are scaling up their capacities, but needs are continuously growing.
A total of 200.000 migrants are expected
to arrive to Hungary by the end of this year.
So far Hungarian Interchurch Aid (HIA) have made preliminary surveys, have started to coordinate its activities and plans with the relevant authorities and is participating in the Coordination Mechanism for the largest NGOs. Collaboration with the Lutheran Church in Hungary and congregations is given priority during the work. The Lutheran Church was the first to support HIA’s actions provide assistance to children and their mothers in the form of children’s clothes, diapers, baby food and hygienic items. HIA have started to provide psychosocial services for children in two temporary reception centres: Bicske and Vámosszabadi. The target group of the project is children between 3-14 years.
HIA is planning to raise funds to be able
to go on with supporting migrants in Hungary.
A partner of the ACT Allliance Joint Programme in Zambia, the Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA) has made a difference in the lives of a Solwezi based family after helping them reclaim land that had been grabbed from them by a named local Church.
“I am very happy that our family land has been given back to us after so many years,” said the family representative, Mr. Alex Mukube Mwanza. “I am highly indebted to Zambia Land Alliance and appreciate the work they are doing in the lives of many other people facing similar challenges in the district.”
ZLA Enhancing Sustainable Livelihoods Through Land Tenure Security (SULTS) project Solwezi Coordinator, Marvelous Chansa, narrated how the problem began: “It all started in 2000 when the named Church rented a piece of land from Mr. Mwanza (now deceased) to temporarily use for their meetings,” he reported.
However after Mr. Mwanza’s death, the Church started to put up a permanent structure without the permission of other family members. Mr. Mwanza’s son, Mr. Alex Mukube Mwanza decided to follow up the issue with the Church and was surprised to learn that the church had even began the process of titling the land.
“We held several meetings with church representatives to try and resolve the matter but no progress was made and we failed to reach a conclusion,” said Mr. Mwanza. “This prompted us to seek solutions on the matter elsewhere and we approached various places and people but failed to get the kind of help we needed.”
In June 2014, a neighbour that had heard of the ZLA advised the family to seek the support of the organisation for advice on their land issues. He was advised to follow the matter using appropriate and well established channels.
“I was advised by the Paralegal Officer at ZLA to seek the attention of the Area Development Committee (ADC) as the starting point,” he said. “As soon as I delivered the referral letter given, the Rural Development Committee (RDC), took action and a letter was written to the church to convene a meeting to facilitate the hearing from both parties and seek the way forward.”
The church refused to attend the meeting and the ZLA advised the family to institute civil court proceedings against the church. On November 6, 2014, the court ruled in favour of the family and the church was ordered to vacate the premises before a set date.
The Zambia Land Alliance is a network of NGOs working for just land policies and laws that take into account the interests of the poor. The organization promotes secured access, ownership and control over land through lobbying and advocacy, research and community participation. The organization has district offices in Kitwe, Chingola, Petauke, Chipata,
Monze, Lusaka, Mansa and Gwembe. It is present in Solwezi through the European Union and DCA funded SULTS project.
The alliance began as a committee in 1997 to coordinate activities of member NGOs. The formation of the alliance was necessitated by the Zambian Government’s land reform process initiated in the early 1990s.
A partner of the ACT Allliance Joint Programme in Zambia, the Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA) has made a difference in the lives of a Solwezi based family after helping them reclaim land that had been grabbed from them by a named local Church.
“I am very happy that our family land has been given back to us after so many years,” said the family representative, Mr. Alex Mukube Mwanza. “I am highly indebted to Zambia Land Alliance and appreciate the work they are doing in the lives of many other people facing similar challenges in the district.”
ZLA Enhancing Sustainable Livelihoods Through Land Tenure Security (SULTS) project Solwezi Coordinator, Marvelous Chansa, narrated how the problem began: “It all started in 2000 when the named Church rented a piece of land from Mr. Mwanza (now deceased) to temporarily use for their meetings,” he reported.
However after Mr. Mwanza’s death, the Church started to put up a permanent structure without the permission of other family members. Mr. Mwanza’s son, Mr. Alex Mukube Mwanza decided to follow up the issue with the Church and was surprised to learn that the church had even began the process of titling the land.
“We held several meetings with church representatives to try and resolve the matter but no progress was made and we failed to reach a conclusion,” said Mr. Mwanza. “This prompted us to seek solutions on the matter elsewhere and we approached various places and people but failed to get the kind of help we needed.”
In June 2014, a neighbour that had heard of the ZLA advised the family to seek the support of the organisation for advice on their land issues. He was advised to follow the matter using appropriate and well established channels.
“I was advised by the Paralegal Officer at ZLA to seek the attention of the Area Development Committee (ADC) as the starting point,” he said. “As soon as I delivered the referral letter given, the Rural Development Committee (RDC), took action and a letter was written to the church to convene a meeting to facilitate the hearing from both parties and seek the way forward.”
The church refused to attend the meeting and the ZLA advised the family to institute civil court proceedings against the church. On November 6, 2014, the court ruled in favour of the family and the church was ordered to vacate the premises before a set date.
The Zambia Land Alliance is a network of NGOs working for just land policies and laws that take into account the interests of the poor. The organization promotes secured access, ownership and control over land through lobbying and advocacy, research and community participation. The organization has district offices in Kitwe, Chingola, Petauke, Chipata,
Monze, Lusaka, Mansa and Gwembe. It is present in Solwezi through the European Union and DCA funded SULTS project.
The alliance began as a committee in 1997 to coordinate activities of member NGOs. The formation of the alliance was necessitated by the Zambian Government’s land reform process initiated in the early 1990s.
