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 ran 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 also allocated all the funds raised from our 2024 year-end fundraiser towards this emergency ($23,852).  Additional funds were also allocated from Dir Biyabir's coffers to cover the budget of this project.

 

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.

 


Implementation

There were 2 phases, funded fully by Dir Biyabir and implemented solely by our partner Adheno.  

Phase 1 (April 7 2025) - Focused on preventing death of people and animals

 

Bugna was/is an area in active military conflict so Adheno took significant risk by accompanying the aid to ensure it reached the right place.

 

 

 

Phase 2 (May to June 2025 ) - Focused on sustainable aid, i.e. helping farmers to go back to producing food

1 hectare = 10,000 square meters


We are thrilled to report that the farmers were able to harvest their wheat and teff crop in December 2025 and local extension workers were able to visit some of the wheat farmers and assess their yield. Teff harvest sadly could not be assessed due to conflict in the areas where teff was planted.