HOTLINE - week of October 15, 2007

The theme of this year's World Food Day, October 16, is "The Right to Food." Church World Service is working year-round to help people find solutions to their food insecurity and gain access to nutritious food.

In Gambia, 400 women in ten gardening groups are learning to grow vegetables more efficiently in village gardens, with the help of Church World Service and partner the Association of Farmers, Educators, and Traders. The women are gaining skills in leadership, business management, garden management, pest control, production planning, and irrigation and cultivation techniques. With the gardens, families are providing for their own basic needs and earning a small income from the sale of surplus produce.

The garden program is serving as a model for other communities in the region.

In the two years since a powerful earthquake devastated parts of northern Pakistan, individuals and communities have worked to rebuild. Church World Service responded to immediate emergency needs following the quake, and has been a part of the rebuilding process.

Some 1,785 men have become certified in construction trades--masonry, electricity, welding, plumbing, and carpentry--with the help of Church World Service and a local partner. The men are building new homes for their families, helping rebuild infrastructure, including schools, and earning an income by assisting other construction efforts throughout the region.

In Mansehra, northern Pakistan, to mark the second-year anniversary, CWS-Pakistan/Afghanistan is promoting disaster management through theater performances, exhibitions, and information-sharing.

Though much has been achieved over the past two years, much remains to be done.

Since the quake, Church World Service has assisted more than 30,000 families, providing food, shelter, clothing, other basic supplies, health care, hygiene training, psychosocial counseling, livelihood training, and water and sanitation systems support.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Felix in Nicaragua, CWS provided 19,955 Hygiene Kits and 20 Interchurch Medical Assistance medicine boxes. Each IMA medicine box provides enough basic medicines to treat as many as 1,000 people for two to three months.

More than 160,000 people in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region of Nicaragua are estimated to have been affected by Hurricane Felix, which came ashore on September 4. They lost homes and crops, latrines overflowed, and wells became contaminated by poisonous residues from nearby mining.

The majority of people in the region--most of whom are indigenous--live in poverty. Many families now need long-term recovery assistance. Church World Service is working in partnership to help provide food and safe water. Partners are also planning to rehabilitate roofs, support tree-planting and vegetable-growing, and provide psychosocial care and disaster preparedness assistance.

In recent months, conflict in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, has forced several hundred thousand people to flee their homes for safety to camps outside the city. Church World Service is working in partnership to provide rice, beans, and vegetable oil for 2,100 families in camps on Mogadishu's outskirts.

The Indonesian province of West Timor (Nusa Tenggara Timur, NTT) has been experiencing severe food insecurity since mid-2002, and the situation requires immediate action, reports CWS Indonesia.

Research carried out by Church World Service and others reveals that among children ages 6-59 months in the Timor Tengah Selatan sub-district, 62.8% are malnourished and underweight and 10.9% are experiencing wasting. And, fully 63.7% of children 24-59 months are experiencing stunting.

"We rang the emergency bell earlier this summer... but nobody seemed to be willing to get into next gear," reports Maurice Bloem, country director of CWS Indonesia.

Earlier this year, CWS staff in Indonesia called for urgent action to address the food insecurity and malnutrition situation in West Timor: a strengthening of existing health and nutrition programs within the country and the re-establishment of a nationwide nutrition and health surveillance system to monitor the situation in vulnerable parts of the country, track changes, and compare different areas in order to prioritize interventions.

"CWS and CARE are running smaller scale programs, but more is required," reports Bloem. "We have an intervention going on with therapeutic feeding and supplementary feeding," he says. However, explains Bloem, urgent, larger scale response is needed to address food insecurity and malnutrition in West Timor in order to avoid increased deaths both among children and mothers.

Your prayers and support - and your participation in CROP WALKS and the TOOLS & BLANKETS Program - make possible these and other life sustaining programs. For information on how to get involved, please call your Church World Service/CROP Regional Office toll-free at 1-888-CWS-CROP, that's 1-888-297-2767.

For information about free loan videos, please call 1-800-297-1516, ext. 338, or e-mail us at: videos@churchworldservice.org.

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