We do something unique to give you a better understanding of who directly benefits from your dog collar purchase. On each collar is a small mark or initial. Find that mark and then click on it and you can meet the maker of your dog collar and read her story!
Not only do the women who make the collars benefit (they are paid for every collar they make) but a majority share of profits goes back to the village community where it will be shared to pay school fees so that the children can go to school, as well as allowing the village to buy cows, sheep and goats and provide necessities for daily life.The proceeds will also allow the village to make long term investments for such things as purchasing a well (currently the women of the village walk over 15km/12miles everyday to obtain water) and create a bio-fuel project to use cow dung for fuel instead of the smoky fires which will help prevent respiratory diseases and early age impaired vision caused by smoke (as well as preventing villagers from being chased by elephants when going out to gather firewood).
Horn of Africa: How can the region be better prepared for recurrent drought?
There is an urgent need to learn the lessons from Ethiopia and to build resilience in the region to enable it to cope with the severe drought it faces every few years
Women and children wait to receive food supplies near the Kakuma refugee camp, northwest of Nairobi. The UN estimates that 11 million people need urgent assistance to stay alive. Photograph: Kabir Dhanji /Reuters
The Horn of Africa is facing a humanitarian catastrophe from the worst drought in 60 years. The UN estimates that more than 11 million people need urgent assistance to stay alive. The region has faced droughts every few years, and each time they have set back progress on reducing poverty, disrupted food production systems and jeopardised the lives of millions of people. The sharp rise in food prices this year makes the situation worse. The severity of the drought and its ominous link to climate change this time around deepen the concern over the current devastation.
Immediate relief and recovery is, of course, the urgent priority in a calamity. But the recurrent nature of the crisis, especially in the face of climate change, also highlights the need to build resilience – in two ways. First, by supporting the development of reliable early warning systems and of flexible social safety nets to protect the most vulnerable groups is one. Second, by strengthening agricultural and agribusiness systems by improving farmers' access to drought-resistant varieties of crops, improved rainwater-harvesting technologies and information from weather-forecasting systems, while continuing to increase investment in irrigation development is the other.
On social safety nets, it is important to look at the emerging work and lessons from Ethiopia's experience. Since the famine of 1984, Ethiopia had issued an appeal for humanitarian assistance every year. Following the drought in 2003, the government established the New Coalition for Food Security and sought a new approach to deal with food insecurity. The approach recognised that issuing annual emergency appeals was unsustainable and did not secure timely delivery of food to drought victims.
The Ethiopian government established the Productive Safety Net Programme in 2005. PSNP, a collaborative effort between the Ethiopian government and development partners, aimed to provide transfers to people in chronically food-insecure areas and structured to prevent asset-depletion for households and create additional assets for communities. An impact evaluation in 2008, right after a significant drought, found that PSNP beneficiaries were more likely to be food secure, to borrow for productive purposes, to use improved agricultural technologies, and to operate non-farm-related business activities. PSNP also prevented beneficiary households from sliding deeper into poverty and selling household assets.
One of the strong points of PSNP has been its flexibility. Initially designed to address regular shocks in rural areas, the programme expanded to create options for two different types of poor – those with the potential to move out of poverty and those who face chronic challenges. Another aspect of PSNP was setting up contingency funds that would allow the government to take swift action during food shortages. The drought risk financing (DRF) mechanism, which considers a rainfall-based index, allows scaling up of disbursements and providing rapid support to households. The DRF was activated in 2008 and in 2009 to respond to food-related shocks, and is scheduled to come into effect again in September to mitigate the effects of the current food shortages in the region.
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