It is heartbreaking to hear Eneles’s uncle explain how hard he works to provide food for this beautiful little girl and the seven other children he looks after.
Every year we distribute seed and fertiliser to help families in Malawi become self-reliant, but because of the drought, crops have been destroyed for the second year running. Eneles and many children like her are hungry and vulnerable.
But, together we can help them. With your support, we can use our outreach work to send children and families like Eneles an extra bag of maize to see them though until the next harvest is due.
We need to do this now, though, before the floods come as they will no doubt make the rural villages our children live in even more difficult to reach. So we are asking for your help. Can you donate £15 today to provide food for one of our families?
Eneles’s uncle works in the local village repairing phones for a living. But with a large family to care for, almost everything he earns goes on food. And as maize is in such short supply you can imagine how erratic the prices are. The family can only buy 16kgs a week, but this rarely lasts a full week.
Enele is given nsima in the afternoon and for dinner, but she is hungry. As food costs so much, there is absolutely nothing left for clothes or school fees. It is as if her life has been put on hold until the family can eat properly.
We managed to leave some maize for her and her family, but this will only last about three weeks. It will help the family when their supplies run low, but they urgently need more.
This is why we need your help. We want to increase the support we give at this desperate time by sending an additional bag of maize to our families. The extra food will give them something to eat when food is running low, make life more liveable and allow them to spend some of their hard earned money on other essentials like school costs.
Malawi is in the worst food crisis it has seen for over a decade. Families call this the hunger months. Babies and children like Eneles who come from larger families are the most vulnerable.
3.5 million children in Malawi do not have enough food. The drought has destroyed harvests this year and the poorest families will suffer most. When we talk to mothers, we hear horror stories of them cooking unripe mangoes over a wood fire because there is absolutely nothing else to eat.
They are living on very little and worry about sending children to sleep with hunger pains in their tummies.
These families rely heavily on farming to survive, they grow maize on small pieces of land where they live. November to March is usually the rainy season but because of a combination of climate changes Malawi is now back drought for the second year running.
After the poor harvest last year, the current drought has compounded the food crisis that families have to face every day. And many are simply going without food.
The Government and their partners are working to help alleviate the effects of the crisis. And they are making great progress but as you can imagine, it is an enormous task, and there is no guarantee that everyone will get the help that they need in time.
This is not something that Open Arms can solve but, there is still an important role for us to play by providing families that we support with an extra bag of maize. With your help, we can do this now. By donating £15 today, you will be providing enough food to help one of our children and their family get through this desperate time.
Please visit our donate page or text MAIZ16 £10 (or the amount you want) to 70070 to donate to Open Arms Malawi and make a difference today.
Your donation will help children in Malawi grow up healthy with the love of a family
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