Last October, the rains did not come. What was supposed to be a rainy season to regenerate the pastureland, support new crops and provide needed water for the people turned into a second consecutive year of drought. In fact, the October–December rainy season was one of the driest ever.
Livestock — the symbol of wealth for most families in the Horn of Africa — began to deteriorate. Marginal crops, withered pastureland and dry water holes exacerbated what is always a challenging time for the area’s people. But they lived in hope for relief when the rains returned in March.
But the rains did not return this March. What rain did come was late and erratic. It totaled only 30 percent of the last 15-year average. Cattle and sheep have died. Even camels have died. In localized areas, up to 60 percent of livestock have perished. Authorities say it is the worst drought to hit the region in 60 years.
A map of the Horn of Africa shows large areas of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia coded crisis colors by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. More than 12 million people face a humanitarian emergency that is only compounded by political turmoil in parts of Somalia, where al-Shabab, an Islamist military organization, ravages what help the world offers.
Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, a four-day walk from the Somali border, shelters more than 400,000 people although it was built to house 90,000. More than 1,000 new refugees arrive each day. In Ethiopia, the Dollo Ado refugee camps care for about 120,000 people with hundreds more arriving daily. It is estimated that one-quarter of Somalia’s population of 7.5 million is now displaced.
Authorities say up to 50 percent of children arriving at the refugee camps are acutely malnourished. The death rate for children under age 5 is nearly six times the normal rate. Officials predict that 800,000 children will die of malnutrition across the region this year.
Southern Baptists are in the area working with the Red Cross, UNICEF and many other humanitarian organizations to provide help to these suffering souls. Southern Baptists, through Baptist Global Response (BGR) — the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) relief arm, support two feeding sites in the Horn of Africa. A total of $190,000 has been allocated for use in northern Kenya and southern Sudan. Leaders would like to open a third feeding site but funds are low. Only enough funds to operate existing hunger relief projects in various parts of the globe for six months are available and that does not include funds for the famine in the Horn of Africa, according to news releases from BGR.
Jeff Palmer, executive director of BGR, said, “Our Southern Baptist avenue of seeing the lost, last and least be helped both physically and spiritually is about to dry up.”
Palmer was referring to the World Hunger Fund offering, which Southern Baptists will collect in October as churches observe World Hunger Sunday on Oct. 9. He said in 2010, Southern Baptists gave the lowest donations to the offering in 20 years. Actual gifts totaled $4.3 million, which was only 40 percent of what Southern Baptists gave a decade ago, according to SBC officials.
Simply giving money will not solve the long-term environmental and social problems prevalent in the Horn of Africa. One Southern Baptist representative serving in the region estimated that it could take a decade to solve the problems. Another declared, “It’s a desperate part of the world — there needs to be something done. There needs to be a systematic answer.” And there does. More than emergency feeding programs are needed.
But in the meantime, while these systematic issues are being addressed, how do Southern Baptists respond to the area’s starving people?
One Southern Baptist representative said, “Southern Baptists are sharing the love of Christ with the hurting Somali people. That love is currently manifesting itself in the form of funding for food relief and medical aid, but it represents a deeper love — and may be opening doors for the message of God’s love to be widely proclaimed in this part of the world.”
Because the Cooperative Program helps provide a worldwide network of Southern Baptist representatives, all of the funds donated to the World Hunger Fund offering go directly to hunger relief projects.
Eighty percent of gifts to the offering go to international relief projects and 20 percent to domestic relief projects. International projects are directed by the International Mission Board. Domestic projects are channeled through the North American Mission Board (NAMB).
When the April 27 tornadoes struck Alabama, NAMB appropriated about $40,000 to help with hunger projects, and more funding for Alabama hunger relief efforts are in the pipeline, according to state Baptist leaders. In 2010, Alabama Baptists also received about $60,000 for hunger-related programs in the state.
According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released in early September, Alabama is fourth in the nation with 17.3 percent of the population living with “food insecurity, such as being unable to afford balanced meals, cutting the size of meals because of too little money for food or being hungry because of too little money for food.” The national average is 14.5 percent. Alabama is third in the nation (7 percent) in the percentage of population going hungry or missing meals because they do not have food.
Domestic projects, whether to help feed tornado survivors or pay for a church-run feeding program in Los Angeles’ Skid Row or breakfast program in Vermont, are channeled through Southern Baptist workers, and every dollar is spent on hunger relief.
Today world leaders wrestled with how to find the estimated $2.5 billion it will take to respond to the famine in the Horn of Africa. National leaders look for ways to turn around an economy that has sent more and more Americans into financial distress. In the meantime, Southern Baptists are about demonstrating God’s love by feeding the hungry just as His Word instructs.
The World Hunger Fund offering needs your support. Please pray about what God would have you and your church to do. More information about the offering is available through the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission at http://erlc.com.
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