Telling the ECSA Story

By Joseph Scott, Communications and Policy Coordinator, CARE South Sudan It’s Thursday afternoon in ‘Addis Ababa’ village, located a few kilometres from Torit town in South Sudan. Despite the sweltering heat, many farmers from the village can be seen working in their fields. Rebecca Ayol, 37, is one of the farmers from Addis Ababa village.  She has just returned from her farm where she had gone to harvest tomatoes. Upon reaching home, Rebecca goes straight to check on her four-year-old son who is sleeping. The young boy has been ill for some time. “He has been suffering from malnutrition,” says Rebecca a mother of four. “However, his condition is improving after I took him to the hospital for treatment.” Supporting farmers to defeat hunger Rebecca’s family is one of the many in the village with a child suffering from malnutrition. She didn’t have enough food to feed her family. As a peasant farmer, Rebecca survived by growing millet in the family garden through rain fe

Givemore Zambasa has been a lead farmer in his community since 2010. He is among the 325 lead farmers who have been trained in Conservation Agriculture With Trees (CAWT) technologies through the UBALE project. UBALE, is a USAID Office of Food for Peace-funded project (implemented by CARE in Nsanje District) that works to increase the productivity of profitable and nutritious crops for smallholder farmers by encouraging the use of sustainable and productive growing techniques. Zambasa has worked with the UBALE project since its inception in 2015. The project’s interventions, particularly the use of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) techniques have helped improve life for Zambasa and his family, resulting in a transformation in both his field and his family’s livelihood. Zambasa’s community is located in the Nsanje District of southern Malawi where soil degradation and unfavorable weather patterns conditions result in poor growing conditions and limited harvests. Before the

Story 1: The man who changed for the better  In GVH Chitseko of Nsanje District, Lovemore Mpotalinga is considered a Gender Champion. Prior to being named a Gender Champion, Mpotalinga was known in the village to be a heavy drinker, he regularly used obscene language and was reportedly abusive to his wife. He would spend days drinking not providing for his family. His children were unable to attend school due to the lack of basic necessities such as clothing and writing materials. His family often faced food shortages, which resulted in his children becoming malnourished. His community decided to give him a life-changing task and selected him to act as a Gender Champion with the USAID Office of Food for Peace-funded UBALE project which is implemented by CARE in Nsanje District. This marked the beginning of new life for Lovemore Mpotalinga and his family. As a Gender Champion, Mpotalinga was asked to reaching out to people in his community and share messages and informa

Esnart Diki is a respected and popular member of her community in GVH Chibuli T/A Ndamera in Malawi’s Nsanje District. She is a Lead Farmer, Chairman of the Village Development Committee (VDC) and an influential member of her community’s Savings and Internal Lending Community (SILC) group. Esnart is also considered a gender champion in her community and is a strong advocate for helping to end early marriages for young girls. Esnart, who has 4 daughters between the ages of 15 and 30, says her motivation for promoting gender equality and empowerment of rural women and girls comes as a result of watching her two eldest daughters marry at young ages. Esnart wished her daughters had continued with their education and waited to marry at an older age. However, within her community, Esnart is challenged by a number of issues she believes significantly impacted her daughters’ decisions to end their education. In Esnart’s rural community, marrying girls at a young age is an ongoing c

STORY 10 South Sudan to Uganda: Three girls in search of survival and school In the heat of the day, Lillian, Scobia and Viola help each other carry large, heavy pieces of wood from a collection point to the temporary shelter they are trying to make into a home at Imvepi refugee settlement in Uganda. They’ve been sharing a latrine with neighbors with no place to shower, so today, they are building their own bathroom on their land. The girls, now 17 years old, are from the same village in South Sudan. Most of the fledgling nation is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis fueled by years of chronic underdevelopment, conflict and natural disasters. The three girls fled to Uganda last year with Viola’s eight-year-old brother, but no adult guardian. Viola and her brother were raised by their uncle until he was killed by soldiers on his way home one day. They survived for a few months off of the vegetables in their garden. When they ran out of food, they moved in with Scobia and h

STORY 7 This 15-year-old Aspiring Filmmaker is Highlighting the Bonds Within Her Refugee Community Walaa and her family used to spend time together gathered around the TV at home in Syria watching their favorite shows. Movies and TV captivated Walaa. She often filled the hours after school or before bed immersed in the worlds of Syrian TV and imagining how she might create her own productions one day. “I have dreamed of becoming a filmmaker for as long as I can remember,” she says. When the war in Syria began in 2011, it interrupted those dreams and transformed her reality into something much harsher than the series she watched or dreamed of creating. In early 2014, constant attacks and fighting drove Walaa’s family from their home. Soon after, a bomb exploded near Walaa’s father Mohammed, piercing his leg with shrapnel and ultimately forcing doctors to amputate it. “Had there been better medical care, my leg would have been treated easily,” Mohammed says. “

STORY 4 The barricaded compounds, innumerable security checks and corner-by-corner police presence are constant reminders of the violence that the people of Afghanistan live with every day. So it would be easy to grow pessimistic about the future of the country. But in my recent visit, I also saw another side of Afghanistan, one that doesn’t make as many headlines. I met Afghanistan’s women and girls. I drew deep inspiration from the Kabul Women’s Association, which began 10 years ago as a feeding program for Afghan widows. It now mobilizes 10,000 women who learn about their rights (in regard to employment, inheritance and other issues), develop their own livelihoods — particularly with regard to livestock — and speak up about key issues such as girls’ education and child marriage. In the process, they solve not only their own problems and those of their families’, but also their community’s too. One of the women, I’ll call her Basima (I’m not using real names to pro

STORY 1 Meet the 17-year-old making sure refugee girls in Lebanon have access to education  Bushra, 17, came to Lebanon five years ago with her father, mother, and eight siblings to escape the conflict in Syria. Her father, who has a law degree, now works selling vegetables. The family lives in a small, rundown rental. Determined not to fall behind on her studies, Bushra confronted challenges with Lebanon’s public school system and helped design a program now being implemented by CARE that supports the secondary education of 60 girls at risk of dropping out. She’ll serve as a mentor to help girls stay in school. This is her story, in her own words.   “l was living a normal childhood like any other child my age. Suddenly something unbelievable destroyed all my dreams, my future — war. I thought we would only stay in Lebanon for four months, so I decided not to enroll here. A year later, after having lost all hope of returning to my country, we started looking for schoo

CARE’s emergency response in South Sudan tackles’ needs of the elderly By Joseph Scott, Communications and Policy Coordinator   Onurina Ikikoyi watches as one of her goats’ feeds in front of her house. Onurina stays alone and hopes that the goats will multiply so that she can sell some to get money to buy food.  © Joseph Scott/CARE Onurina Ikikoyi cannot recall the exact date she delivered her tenth and last-born child.   However, she remembers the joy she felt after giving birth to the only girl-child in the family. Celebrations went for a week, she recalls, as her relatives and friends delighted in yet another precious addition to the family. For Onurina, having many children meant a guarantee of a better and secure life in old age. In her culture, children provide for their parents. They are a safety net when one is frail.   But for Onurina, fate had its own ideas. “I lost all my nine sons,” says Onurina from Enyif village in Torit. “I am only left with one