Bugna Wello Emergency Relief:
Summary
The wereda (district) of Bugna in North Wello Zone, Ethiopia, is a predominantly agrarian community that is currently experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis due to military conflict, flooding, recurring drought, and lack of access to seeds and fertilizers. This has led to drastically reduced agricultural yields and widespread malnutrition. In a recent assessment 61% of children tested and 68% of women were found to be malnourished. In addition the region has no access to veterinary medicine and this has put 100,000 cattle, sheep, and goats at high risk of dying from various animal diseases. In fact over 3,000 animals have already died due to lack of medication.
Dir Biyabir is running an online emergency fundraiser on *spotfund to address this humanitarian crisis. In addition to allocating 100% of funds received from this fundraiser towards emergency relief for Bugna, Dir Biyabir will also allocate all the funds raised from our 2024 year-end fundraiser towards this emergency ($23,852).
Goal
Dir Biyabir has very limited capacity to address this major humanitarian crisis, and so we have worked with local partners on developing a plan for combining short-term food aid with more sustainable aid, i.e helping the community to save it's livestock so they can make a more long-term recovery. We will fund the following 2 activities:
1) Procure and distribute immediate food assistance for the most vulnerable (children, elderly, pregnant and lactating women, people with disabilities, women-headed households) :
30,000 kgs (66,000 lbs) raw wheat for 2000 individuals 13,000 kgs (28,600 lbs) Teff grains for 867 individuals
2) Procure and distribute essential veterinary medicines to treat 100,000 cattle, sheep, and goats in Bugna district, preventing further loss of livestock, thus enabling the long-term recovery of this agrarian community.
We will fund the procurement of raw wheat grain as opposed to bleached wheat flour as it retains its fiber and is more nutritious, it gives the recipients more flexibility as they can grind it to make whole wheat bread, or boil it to make “nifro”, or roast it to make “qolo”.
We are also including some teff as it is the most highly prized grain and the local staple. Teff is also the most expensive so we are limiting the quantity purchased.
Key points on the fundraiser
- Given the urgency of food aid, we would really appreciate if you could send in your donation as soon as you can:
- For larger donations, we encourage you to use Zelle (we are registered under dirbiyabir@gmail.com) or send a check directly to us to avoid fees (there are transaction fees on*spotfund). Please mail your check payable to “Dir Biyabir” and mail to Dir Biyabir P O Box 914, Mountain View, CA 94042. We will email you a tax receipt, please include your email on the Zelle/check
- 100% of your donation is tax-deductible in the US as Dir Biyabir is a registered non- profit.
- If you work for a company that has an employee match program we urge you to please request a match for your donation by submitting the tax receipt that is sent to you from *spotfund
- Due to the urgent nature of this crisis, we kindly request your support for this urgent appeal as soon as possible and we thank you in advance for your generosity. We will post updates as we receive them.
We pray for all the residents of Bugna and for their speedy recovery from this crisis.