Living in a metropolitan, we seldom pay attention on agricultural development. In fact, our lives are dependent on hard working farmers. Could you imagine what would happen if farmers all over the world take a one-week holiday?
Affected by chronic internal armed conflict, northern, southern and southeastern parts of Myanmar faced harmful consequences leading to destruction of community livelihood and land. Family can hardly stabilise their income, whereas many children were malnourished.
CEDAR’s partner, Myanmar Family Development Company Limited (MFDC), has been teaching community representatives from these areas organic farming methods that would restore soil quality and improve crop yield at their training centre near Yangon. In recent years, the training center began to apply teachings of the Bible to teach community representatives from these areas to practise crop rotation, in order to preserve Sabbath for land, recovery of soil quality and yield improvement.
A farmer could only grow crops with the help of a fine weather, the fertile land, and the technique he/she possesses. Sadly, the weather is often against men’s will, and its impact reaches beyond the immediate food scarcity; the inability to store crops and seeds also hampers the subsequent farming activates. Unfortunately, the El noir in the past 3 years have caused severe drought in multiple eastern African countries, and a tremendous amount of people are suffering from famine, especially for countries like Zimbabwe, where over 65% of its population survives on farming.
[ePrayer – Pray for the post-drought rehabilitation in Ethiopia]
Ethiopia and Kenya were seriously affected by drought in 2011. CEDAR supported partner Tearfund UK to provide emergency relief in Ethiopia. By the end of 2012, partner has also started a post-disaster rehabilitation project in Moyale District in partnership with a local Christian group Ethiopian Mulu Wongel Amagnoch Church Development Organization (EMWACDO). The project focuses on rehabilitating 7,000 poor and vulnerable households to improve their livelihood with selected interventions such as restocking of the livestock, income diversification through introduction and promotion of high yielding agricultural inputs, construction of water schemes for human and the livestock consumption, and promoting money saving and credit culture through organising self-help groups.
Praise the Lord for the good rainfall and calm after conflict. And now, the project fits in well with the government strategies. The district government, therefore, plays an active role in providing veterinary support and vaccination to the goat purchase and distribution process.
Pray for the post-drought rehabilitation in Ethiopia:
Local partner EMWACDO is the first NGO to train women in vegetable production. The District Agriculture Bureau will scale it up to other areas. Pray that more communities will be benefited;
Now, 30 self-help groups are organised, which is over double of what we planned. Pray for good coordination and facilitation.
The progress of goat purchase and distribution is quite behind; and the pilot introduction of drip irrigation is in utmost urgency. Please remember the implementation of different components of the project.
[1] CEDAR is an approved charitable institutions and trusts of a public character under section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Please click Inland Revenue Department website to check for details. [2] Donations over $100 are tax deductible in Hong Kong with our receipts. [3] Please DO NOT fax any donation information.
