Telling the ECSA Story

Participants now have stable running water they are using to irrigate their gardens. © Titukulane RFSA 2023/Samuel Chibaya Although Cyclone Freddy severely battered much of Zomba, lives and property were saved, thanks to the adoption of watershed protection practices. Led by Lifa Village Natural Resource Management Committee (VNMRC), over 3,000 households protected their watershed with water and soil conservation structures such as swales, check dams, eyebrows, deep trenches, and stone bunds before the devastating rainy season. Evelyn Mwada, secretary for Lifa Watershed in Zomba, recounted the effectiveness of the protection measures: "When the stormy winds and torrential rains came, many of the structures stood strong. Out of 3,000 check dams, only 168 were damaged; out of 1,050 swales, 700 were damaged; out of 500 cubic meters of stone bunds, 100 were damaged, and there was no damage on the 1,000 cubic meters of deep trenches. Titukulane has trained us on how to protect our area...

  Zambia. CARE As the conflict in Ukraine continues, the shock waves are being felt all the way in Southern Africa which is still reeling from one of the worst cyclone seasons. From a shortage of relief supplies to hiked fuel costs, communities that were slowly recovering from the loss of livelihoods and floods now face another challenge as the cost of living increases. This has impacted response efforts and raises the worry of how the people will recover and resume normal living as things become more expensive. Hiked wheat and fuel costs are not only causing an increase in the cost of living but also putting the jobs of hundreds, in several sectors, at risk. In Zambia and Zimbabwe, where the economies were already fragile, fuel prices have increased by 13 percent and 7 percent respectively in Countries. On March 11th, Cyclone Gombe, a Category 3 storm struck Nampula province in Mozambique. So far, 61 fatalities have been recorded with over 450,000 people displaced. As humanitarian...

Lucia Francisco had two clear priorities in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai: “For me and my community I would like to receive food and shelter. The food will help us be strong so we can rebuild our houses and lives.” So that’s what CARE does—helps people rebuild houses and lives all over the world. CARE’s Emergency Shelter Team provides technical expertise in emergency shelter and reconstruction. Cyclone Idai dominated the Shelter Team’s humanitarian response during the financial year July 2018 - June 2019. During that period, the Shelter Team also provided comprehensive technical assistance to CARE’s shelter and camp management activities in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya refugee settlement in Bangladesh - which remains the largest refugee camp in the world - as well as supporting emergency responses in Lebanon, Nepal, Turkey, Uganda, Vanuatu. What have we accomplished? 73 projects  implemented around the world with a shelter and housing component. Two projects involved camp coordinatio...

By Jennifer Bose, Emergency Communications Officer, CARE · There is a sea of mud and rubble for as far as the eyes can see. In one of the poorest neighborhoods in Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique, the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai is plain to see. It’s all around you. The blazing sun is searing to the skin. Yesterday, my personal nightmare was not having running water in the guesthouse, forcing me to shower with a bucket full of cold water. Looking at the children playing in dirty water around me, my “phobia” vanishes almost instantly. There’s rubble everywhere. Parts of metal roofs have sunk into the mud and large patty fields now have the same effects as quicksand, making them impossible to cross. In the middle of the narrow walkways, puddles remind me of the vast flooding people experienced here just a few days ago. "The water was up to my hips," Manuela tells me. She ran outside with her eight-month-old daughter, Mariam, when the cyclone ble...

By Joseph Scott The spectre of flooding has always hung over Chitsa village in Nsanje, Rhoda Benford says. A fact of life during rainy seasons, the floods have traditionally always been anticipated during the month of January. So, when the month of January passed without incident, Rhoda thought the worst was over and started preparing for a good harvest. This year, she says, the crop had been good and she expected a bumper harvest. “I had a good crop of maize, some millet and a lot of pumpkins,” says the mother of five. “But all has been washed away.” Cyclone Idai caught communities unaware Like many in her village, Rhoda never saw the Cyclone Idai induced floods coming. She was looking into the future with hope. Almost 80 percent of people affected by the floods rely on their small holder farms as a source of income and for their livelihood. So, having a good harvest means much more than just a meal on the table. “If I get surplus harvest, I sell some to get mo...