CAFOD Harvest Appeal

Jo Lewry enjoyed seeing volunteers and supporters at the Harvest Fast Day planning meeting on Saturday 17th September at St Bede’s in Basingstoke...

It was fantastic to see so many CAFOD parish volunteers in person last week. COVID prevented us from meeting together during the last few years and although zoom is great it is not the same as meeting face to face! Many thanks to Ibrahim Njuguna CAFOD’s Surge Country Representative for Africa for giving such an inspiring and informative talk at the meeting. Ibrahim has worked in international development for over 20 years, and he provides CAFOD with surge management capacity across our country programmes in Africa in line with CAFOD’s organisational strategy and Our Common Home. He talked about the World Food Crisis and the difficulties in East Africa. Over 20 million people face high levels of food insecurity due to 3 years of drought, and parts of southern and central Somalia face a risk of famine. 6.5 million children are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition. Over 16 million people are living with daily household water insecurity and lack of water. East Africa is suffering from a range of disasters such as plague of locusts, years of drought, COVID and rise in food and fuel prices because of the war in Ukraine.

CAFOD is working with our partners such as Caritas Marsabit, Caritas Isiolo, Caritas Rumbek, Caritas Malakal, Caritas Ethiopia providing immediate lifesaving assistance which could be in form of food, cash, voucher, water provision. We are also supporting long term food production through climate resilient agricultural approaches, repairing boreholes broken down due to over utilization and ensuring that communities have access to safe water through water tracking. You can support CAFOD’s life saving work on Family Fast day on Friday 7th October by donating online here or using the envelopes provided in your parish.