Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson

As the mother of soccer players (both of whom are now too old for schoolboy sports, but never too old for pickup matches wherever they can find them), I read a story in the New York Times today that made me smile. “Joy that lasts, on the poorest playgrounds,” said the headline. It was about soccer—the universal language for love of a ball—and a new kind of material to play it with: PopFoam.

It was a story about an entrepreneur driven to develop PopFoam soccer balls for kids in some of the poorest parts of the world, where a ball is often just something that can be made to roll, even if it’s more oblong than round.

How many times have I witnessed that joy the headline heralds? It’s one of the thrills of any visit to the field I have ever taken  for Oxfam—to catch sight of a game on a patch of rough earth, on the foundation of a ruined house, beyond the mud walls of a compound. Plumes of dust billow at each bounce of the ball, feet flying after it. No shoes? No one seems to mind. The ball is all that matters.

 A whoop. A score.

And the game goes on. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we’re joining our partners at Blog Action Day and thousands of others worldwide to pay tribute to the power of community. The 2012 Blog Action Day theme, “the power of we,” is “a celebration of people working together to make a positive difference in the world, either for their own communities or for people they will never meet.”

At Oxfam America, we know just how much those collaborative efforts matter. Around the world, our programs to solve poverty and hunger are often led by local men and women who are working together to improve their own lives. Here in the US, our supporters also help raise awareness about these efforts and inspire others to take action. Sometimes those two groups even come together, as you’ll see in some of the photos below—and when they do, the results can be astonishing.

So in honor of “the power of we,” here are five Oxfam photos that we think best capture the spirit of community:

1.   Sharing solutions to hunger

Selas Samson Biru, center, a farmer from Tigray, Ethiopia, compares crops with Sonia Kendrick, left, and Linda Barnes, right, both Iowa farmers and Oxfam Sisters on the Planet ambassadors. In honor of World Food Day last year, Oxfam brought women farmers like Biru to the US to meet their American counterparts and talk about shared solutions to global hunger. Photo: Ilene Perlman/Oxfam America

2.   Pooling resources

Local women in Banakoro, Mali, during a weekly meeting of their community savings and lending group, which they call Sabougnuma, or “good deed.” Oxfam’s Saving for Change program helps poor people in five countries start and run their own village savings groups, which act as community banks and can make loans to members in need. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America

3.   Lending a hand

NFL superstar wide receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin (facing away from camera) help with community rebuilding efforts during a visit to Tigray, Ethiopia, with Oxfam earlier this year. Inspired by their travels, Boldin and Fitzgerald recently launched a fundraising campaign to help Ethiopian communities recover from last year’s drought and food crisis. Photo: Audra Melton/Oxfam America

4.   Providing for the next generation

Marlith Amasifuen, shown here with her son Bryan, is one of 30 indigenous women from Aviación, Peru, who work together to maintain a shared garden deep in the Amazon forest. With Oxfam’s support, the women cultivate the same traditional crops that their Kichwa ancestors once grew, protecting their families from crop loss caused by climate change and providing a steady food source for their children.  Photo: Percy Ramírez/Oxfam America

5.  Educating friends and neighbors

More than 200 people participated in an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet® event in New York City in 2011. Nearly 40 years after the first Oxfam America Hunger Banquet, this memorable, interactive event continues to educate Americans about the causes of hunger and poverty; thousands of people around the country host or attend local Hunger Banquets each year. Photo: Nicole Kindred/Oxfam America

Kenny Rae traveled to Ethiopia in March to support relief efforts for communities in the Bale zone who are struggling to overcome the East Africa drought and food crisis.

Every morning Yenee leaves her two children in the care of her sister and ventures off to collect water for her family. After walking for two hours she arrives at the spring–the only source of water for miles around.

She is not alone. In Laga Hidha, a remote district in southeast Ethiopia which hasn’t seen rain for over a year, collecting water for drinking, cooking and bathing can be an all day affair–every day. At mid-morning at the spring there can sometimes be more than 100 women, some of whom have walked for more than seven miles. She will wait patiently in line for another two hours to fill her  jerrycans. She then returns home, carrying 30 liters (66 pounds weight) of water on her back.

In some parts of Ethiopia, women like Yenee walk several miles to collect water for their families and livestock. Photo by Kenny Rae / Oxfam America.

It wasn’t always like this. Nine years ago a well equipped with a hand pump  was installed in her village which provided water for all. Twice yearly rains would replenish the open wells and ponds that provided water for livestock, for bathing and  for laundering clothes.

The hand pump has been broken for over a year, and a promise to replace it by an aid agency has yet to be fulfilled. The prolonged drought has caused the open wells and ponds to dry up, and the cattle and goats that benefited from them have been sold off or have perished. Where there was once pasture, there in now only dust. Those determined to hold on to a couple of animals for milk must venture further and further from home to find food for their animals.

In Hidha Hunda village, an elder told us that one of the few remaining cows had, the day before been taken in search of food  and water and, miles away, had collapsed from hunger. Its owner left it where it lay and returned home. In every village we visited here, and in the neighboring district of Sawena we learned of the hardships that people are dealing with.

In  Gale  village all the  livestock has been sold. Families were unable to  keep one or two animals for milk as the surrounding pasture is long depleted. No crops have been cultivated for over a year. Collecting honey used to provide additional income for the villagers but, without water and flowers, the bees are gone. Read the rest of this entry »

Along with millions of other Americans, I’ll be watching Anquan Boldin and the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL playoffs this weekend—but my mind will be in Ethiopia.

I traveled to southern Ethiopia not long ago to visit Oxfam America’s programs in the area. As we drove, my colleague Tewodros Negash explained why Oxfam uses its cash-for-work program to pay communities to clear brush from the fields by hand, something they’ve done for generations by setting controlled fires. As it turns out, the winds, which for as long as anyone can remember have been predictable, are now wholly unreliable. It used to be that people could set fire to the brush, rely on the wind to control the flames, and have a field that was clear in time for the rains. The grass would grow and their animals would have a place to graze. But with wind that’s unpredictable, and rain that’s even more so, communities must now take steps to survive the effects of climate change.

Just weeks later I told that story to Boldin and his friend and former teammate Larry Fitzgerald, NFL wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals, during a meeting to discuss Oxfam America’s work. Boldin and Fitzgerald learned this summer of the devastating drought in East Africa and were looking for ways to help, which is why they reached out to Oxfam.

“I’ve been to the Horn of Africa before,” Fitzgerald, who will be appearing in the Pro Bowl for the seventh time later this month, told Yahoo! Sports Radio in a recent interview. “And I’ve seen some of the effects of the drought myself. … When you see [people affected by drought] you definitely want to do something because they are in dire need.”

Since then, in between catching footballs and evading linebackers and safeties, Boldin and Fitzgerald have raised money for Oxfam America on Twitter and Facebook, filmed a public service announcement (below) and used their high profiles to bring attention to the crisis.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

Coco McCabe filed this report from Ethiopia, where she is reporting on the severe drought in East Africa. In August, she visited an area in northern Ethiopia – which has thus far escaped this year’s drought but has been devastated in the past – to report on initiatives to fight recurrent drought. Her reporting is featured in a World Food Day half-hour documentary special report from ViewChange and Oxfam: “ViewChange:  Africa’s Last Famine,” which is available online at www.oxfamamerica.org and www.viewchange.org and broadcasts on Link TV on Friday, October 14, and Tuesday, October 18.

When we left Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa for the long drive south to Yabello, the air that was cool at dawn turned dry as the sun inched higher—pucker dry, the kind that makes you lick your lips until they sting and leaves your fingertips feeling chalky. Maybe some of it was due to the dust in the air, a veil of topsoil whipped aloft by the wind and mixed with plumes of black smoke swelling from the tailpipes of trucks.

We were on our way to a triangle of drought that has plunged more than 13 million people in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia into crisis. Some places are the driest they have been in 60 years and famine has struck Somalia.

We stopped to stock up on water—plastic bottles of it covered with the brand name “YES” and a tagline that declared “for a better life.” As we pulled back onto the road all I could think about were the words of our driver: “On a long journey, water is better than food.” I reached for one of the bottles and settled it in my lap, taking long swigs as the sun grew hotter.

Climbing through coffee country around Yirgacheffee, we entered a stretch of respite from the sun. Clouds had massed over the hills and rain drops began to pelt the windshield. The wipers whisked them away, turning a morning’s worth of dust into a film of grime. We had caught the tail end of a downpour and through the side window of our car, I watched people watch the rain, standing alone in their doorways, peering out their windows, their faces solemn. I wondered how much they knew about the drought in the south.

Read the rest of this entry »

"We left our village because of the drought," said Fatima Mohammed, a mother of four from Somalia whose family sought shelter in Ethiopia. Photo: Jane Beesley / Oxfam America

Somalia remains the epicenter of the drought and food crisis in East Africa, with 3.7 million men, women, and children affected. Famine has been declared in some parts of the country, and the UN estimates about a quarter of Somalia’s population—1.8 million people—has been displaced. 

Since early August, Oxfam has provided clean water and sanitation for an estimated 11,000 Somali refugees in Hilaweyn camp, in Dollo Ado, Ethiopia. Oxfam’s Jane Beesley visited Dollo Ado last month and spoke with recently arrived refugees, whose stories are excerpted below.

Hussain Aden said his family walked for 30 days to reach a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Photo: Jane Beesley/Oxfam

Hussain Aden, left, and his family walked for 30 days to reach Dollo Ado from their village, Juwari. “We have a household of 20 people, including children and grandchildren,” he said. “We left due to hunger and drought. We used to have livestock. They all died: 35 cattle and 15 sheep. When the last one died that is when we decided to leave. We left our houses and came here. Before there were droughts but not like this. I don’t know when the drought will end.

“On the way we were very dusty and hungry. We had a little maize that we prepared on the way. We walked with our children on our backs … the children are small and couldn’t walk by themselves.”

Aden said one of the challenges the family faces now is the lack of opportunities to earn a decent income. “All the men want to work, but there is nothing for us. The women are collecting firewood, which they sell … [but] we are idle when we want to work.”

Hawa Aden said she collects and sells firewood to buy food for her family. Photo: Jane Beesley/Oxfam

 “I went out and collected firewood early this morning,” said his wife, Hawa Aden. “Normally we go at 7am and come back at 1pm. I go with a lot of other women. It takes three hours to get to the place where we collect wood.

“If I sell wood in the camp I get 5 Birr (about 29 cents), but if I go into town I can get 10 Birr (58 cents). It takes me one hour to walk into town and another hour to walk back. I use the money to buy tea, salt … food for the family. I get water in the camp, one jerry can a day. I use the water for bathing the children, preparing tea, and drinking. … I have two children, both boys; they are 7 and 4.”

Fatima Mohammed, pictured above, arrived in Dollo Ado with her four children. Her family was waiting in a transitional camp before moving to long-term shelter.  “We left our village because of the drought,” she said. “We’ve been experiencing drought now for three years. All the people from my village have come here. We’d heard people were coming to Dollo Ado. On the way we asked people for directions.

“I think life here compared to there will be different for us,” said Mohammed. “When I arrived I felt satisfied, because I thought now I’ll get everything I need—enough food, enough water, and my children will get good medicine.”

Oxfam aims to reach more than 3 million people throughout East Africa with a variety of support, including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are drilling and repairing wells and distributing fuel vouchers to ensure that pumps on the wells can keep operating—even if people have no money. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

Kenny Rae/Oxfam America

This just came to us from Kenny Rae, a public health engineer currently working in southern Ethiopia helping to rehabilitate water systems.

“As with other pastoralist families in Dire district in Southern Ethiopia, 10-year-old Guyo Hamadi and his family are traveling with their herd of cattle in an increasingly more difficult search for water and fodder. Guyo and his father and brother will travel more than 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) to provide water for their herd, of which they have already lost one third due to the drought. Oxfam’s drought response program in Dire includes rehabilitating wells that will provide water for people and their livestock, and the delivery of water by tanker truck to meet immediate needs in outlying areas.”

Oxfam aims to reach 3 million people in the East Africa region with a variety of support including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals.  We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

Tede Lokapelo holds a day's worth of food. Photo by Rankin

A severe food crisis and drought is now affecting millions of people in East Africa. Among the areas hit hardest is northern Kenya’s Turkana region, where many people are herders who depend on their animals—camels, cows, goats, and sheep—for both food and income.

In March 2011, the photographer Rankin visited Turkana to capture photos and stories of people affected by the ongoing crisis. In the excerpt below, Tede Lokapelo, 85, talks about the dramatic changes he has witnessed in his lifetime.

“We are poor because the season is always dry. Everything dies, every day, every day, every day. For me the world has changed for the worse. We are living with a lot of uncertainties—no water, no food.

“It used to rain even when the grass was still green. It was never dry like this. Now maybe it rains for a few minutes or a few hours, but the earth is too dry nothing can be absorbed. This kind of drizzly rain is useless. If you look at the ground it is not even wet. You can tell whether the rain will be good or bad by looking at those mountains. You see that kind of smoke or fog? That is a symbol of the dry season. That fog needs to clear before the big rain clouds can come, then the skies can open and it will rain like it used to for days. It used to rain so that floods and rivers appear. But that will not happen until that fog disappears.

“In this community there are people called rain makers. In the past, when we had a prolonged drought, all the men would go and see the rain maker. We would sit under a special tree in the mountains and pray for rain. But God seems to have become too far away, and these traditions don’t work anymore.

“Back then we had everything, even wild animals were everywhere. There were antelopes, ostriches, wild cats, even lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards, everything. The last time I saw a lion it was 1971. By 1971 we could not see any animals here. The antelope remained around for a while but by 1988 the antelopes also started dying. The wild animals found no grass here, just dust. There was no shade for them. They began slowly dying of hunger. Those that could walk began walking away. They went to places where they could find shade and water.

“I miss those animals very much. The environment is not complete without them.

“ [Today] I only have seven goats left. I used to have 200. … This drought has taught me a lesson. I have learned that it is too difficult to keep animals. Our strong dependence on livestock, our old way of life, has completely gone.”

Oxfam aims to reach 3 million people–1.3 million in Kenya, 700,000 in Ethiopia, and 500,000 in Somalia—with a variety of support, including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are drilling and repairing wells and distributing fuel vouchers to ensure that pumps on the wells can keep operating—even if people have no money. Find out how you can support our efforts.

Already the largest in the world with more than 360,000 people, the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya continues to swell with Somalis fleeing famine. Across East Africa, especially in northern Kenya, southern Ethiopia, and south central Somalia, a drought and food crisis is affecting 12 million people.

Following are some of the impressions of Oxfam’s JJ Singano who is helping to provide water and sanitation services in Dadaab—and worrying about what the future will hold for people seeking safety there.

Oxfam installs a water tank in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

 More and more people are arriving every day. They come tired and hungry, half naked, and without food and water. They walk all the way from Somalia – sometimes for 10 days, sometimes even for 30 days – and they arrive with nothing. It’s a very difficult journey. Thousands make it, but they say that others die on the way. Children get attacked by hyenas, while others die from starvation as they walk in the heat and the desert. Bandits steal from them, especially the women and children, and men are often not allowed to cross the border. Read the rest of this entry »

Kristin Davis meets Madina Farah Yusuf at Dadaab in Kenya.

As conflict and drought continue to ravage Somalia, the world’s largest refugee camp keeps growing—by more than 1,000 people a day. Dadaab, in Kenya, is teeming with 380,000 people, four times the number the camp was designed for.

And more are on their way.

East Africa—particularly the triangle between south and central Somalia, northern Kenya, and southern Ethiopia—is now in the grip of a serious drought and food crisis that is affecting more than 10 million people.

Oxfam Ambassador Kristin Davis, star of Sex and the City, just visited Dadaab to help draw the world’s attention to the drought and what countless refugee families are enduring.  One of the women she met there was Madina Farah Yusuf, who walked for 10 days with her seven children to reach the camp. On the way, Yusuf came across four other children whose parents had died of starvation. She took them in and guided them to Dadaab, where they are all now taking shelter together under a tree.

“We left Somalia in fear for our lives: There was so much hunger and war,” Yusuf told Davis, before recounting her harrowing journey to Dadaab and the hardships that continue. “Bandits robbed us of our food and clothes on the way. It gets very cold at night, and the children cry. We only have one blanket. It is also unprotected out in the open. I worry that hyenas will attack the children.”

At the camp, basics are in short supply.

“We drank some tea this morning,” Yusuf continued. “But we have very little food. The rations are not enough for everyone to eat every day.”

An Oxfam pump a few hundred feet away is providing her family with water, but many people still need shelter and toilets.

Oxfam is responding to the drought and food crisis with water, sanitation services, and food. Our goal is to reach 3 million people. Your support can help us get there.