Create Change for Africa

Check out these organizations for more information on how you can join the fight to end hunger in Somalia and the Horn of Africa by donating funds, food and emergency supplies, or simply a few minutes of your time.



World Food Programme
The United Nations World Food Programme has begun relief operations in five countries affected by drought and food shortages: Somali, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Uganda. You can read about their efforts to end hunger in these troubled regions of the Horn of Africa and watch videos from the camps at Dadaab and Mogadishu.



CARE
CARE is working onsite at the Dadaab Refugee Camps to provide food and supplies as well as healthcare, education, and violence prevention services. Learn more about this organization's wide-reaching efforts and how thousands of families are fighting for survival at the Dadaab camps.


Medicines Sans Frontieres, more commonly known in the US as Doctors Without Borders, is on the frontlines providing emergency medical support to malnourished patients in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Watch their homepage for real-time updates on their East African relief initiatives.

 

An elderly woman cares for her grandchildren in a makeshift tent at a refugee camp in Dadaab. Photo via AP Images

Hunger Crisis in East Africa

Any work of multimedia--whether I choose to describe it as a collage, an installation, a website, a video, or a spoken word poem--has the potential to create community. No author truly works in a vaccuum, and today's rapidly growing internet culture has allowed us to forge more connections than ever before. Sharing our work online instantly connects us to thousands of potential viewers from our university community to the other side of the globe.

Our first class project in Multimedia Authoring will have a direct impact on communities thousands of miles away from Fort Worth, in places and cultures we have never seen or experienced. Each of us will create a collage to raise awareness of the famine that has depleted food supplies throughout eastern Africa, jeopardizing the lives of millions in Somalia and surrounding nations.

The region's worst drought in over half a century coupled with political unrest in Somalia have contributed to the severe shortage. In a recent bulletin, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) called the famine "the most severe food security emergency in the world today." You can learn more at http://www.usaid.gov/.

Our challenge as a class is to persuasively communicate our message through images and text, encouraging members of the TCU community to donate funds and supplies. We'll set up donation centers around the campus, and the fruits of our labor will go to the nonprofit organization of our choice.

PBS.org has compiled a list of disaster relief organizations that are working to end the food shortage in the Horn of Africa: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/07/east-africa-famine-how-to-help.htm
This article provides contact information for each of the nonprofits listed. Your donations will help these committed organizations to provide emergency dietary rations and essential medical supplies. As I continue to research this developing crisis throughout the next week, I'll feature some outstanding organizations that are making strides to end hunger in East Africa.