Cultivate Plants- Cultivate Peace in Ethiopia

Worst pain in the world, when you don’t have what you feed your kids   

“We are no more shortage to feed your kids poor,” You Kind support not only born fruit and feed us including our children.  Women shown pictured below, some of the MHO beneficiaries of the project

You Kind support not only born fruit and feeds our affected comminute and including current children and poor women beneficiaries sheltered in our different MHO rehabilitation centers in a sustainable way 

Over the past 11 years, MHO has been functioning intact in close coordination with underprivileged communities, especially with extending its projects to the marginalized and excluded group. Over the past few years. As a longtime operator who passed the different stages of challenge and pressure in the humanitarian and development sector of Ethiopia, In the last two years, we encountered an incident we had never seen before in our humanitarian intervention. In the last 4 years, Ethiopia's people have suffered from different hazards, including war, Ethnic conflict, socio-political instability and land dispute conflict, and drought, and Desert locust which caused the displacement of millions of people.

 War and conflict Ethiopia's war not only resulted in huge human costs and have also impacted civilians and residents in terms of widespread destruction of livelihoods, and damage to agricultural productivity, and property assets.

As the war expanded beyond Tigray to Amara and Afar, the number of people affected communities from both the Tigray border and Amhara alarmingly increased and the demand for service was growing.  Not only that as we are part of a community constituency, we observed that the second round of war After the Cessation of Hostilities, not only harmed severely Communities living in conflict-affected districts of  Tigray but also Communities Tigray severely affected and continue to face suffering from a lack of basic services. This created a new wave of humanitarian needs with a high number of variable people in need of support while the response and available resources are still insufficient to meet the mounting needs. This is further exacerbated by the ongoing drought in south

On the other hand, due to war their farmland had been destroyed and many of the communities also face food shortages, therefore the problem is unavoidable. The people were unable to feed themselves. In the middle of this crisis and on the verge of this, one-day MHO gets an email from GlobalGiving Disaster Relief and Recovery team, letting MHO know that MHO is now considered by GlobalGiving partners for small grant support based on the work they’re doing. According to MHO received funding support from both Tigray Famine Crisis Relief Fund and the Africa Hunger Relief Fund support. As mentioned in our previous progress report with this funding many lives were saved and the immediate needs of affected communities both by war and drought ad addressed by providing them food, clean water, basic sanitation Provide medical treatment and psychosocial support, and critical supplies.

Although this grant immensely helped MHO to act quickly and address and reach out to the neediest as well as saved much life and protected the most affected communities before they got hungry, however as high food prices increased and people in need of support increased in the north, MHO does not take much time to well aware of what with this small grant support it is difficult to feed and serve the high number of affected community relay on its services in a sustainable way. These were the circumstances leading up to born alternative food production in the backyard of the MHO rehabilitation center of the Bahardar branch of the MHO. As shown pictured below currently varieties of vegetables and nutritious like maize and carrot are harvested and cultivated on   21 thousand land backyard of the MHO rehabilitation center of the Bahardar not only born fruit and enabled MHO    feeds our affected comminute  Currently about 53 women with children to have access to sufficient nutritious and food.

MHO alternative food production on  21 thousand land backyard of the MHO rehabilitation center of the Bahardar branch o not only to address immediate needs in the aftermath of displacement and specifically their food, nutrition and feed our affected comminute and including current children and poor women beneficiaries sheltered in our different MHO rehabilitation center in a sustainable way. But also by enhancing agricultural productivity improvement of food and nutrition security and thus the well-being of local communities in food deficit areas by gardening and harvesting on 21 thousand land and cultivating varieties of vegetables and nutritious food to feed

Initially, the idea of alternative food production in the backyard of the MHO rehabilitation center of the Bahardar branch  was conceived and  born   to achieve the priority objective of the project GlobalGiving's East Africa Hunger Relief Fund, y which is  to: Support the land restoration and alternative food production in addition to life-saving support, However In do courses  of project implementation MHO  gained much knowledge and lesson learned that contribute   to longer-term recovery efforts and  to address food insecurity in a sustainability  way

Lesson learned

• From this action, we learned that GlobalGiving not only provided us with life-saving support, and access to tools knowledge, and resources but also GlobalGiving thought us how to feed affected comminute by promoting alternative food production. Currently with the kind support of GlobalGiving and its partner what we harvested on 21 thousand hectares of land not only born fruit  and GlobalGiving   feeds our affected comminute and includes current children and poor women beneficiaries sheltered in our different MHO rehabilitation centers in a sustainable way
• From this action, we learned that the GlobalGiving platform not only provided access to tools knowledge, and resources but also the MHO witnessed that posting of different projects on the GlobalGiving project site enabled  MHO  to address an immediate need for immediate relief while long-term recovery.
• GlobalGiving Timely, support and  quick  high impact project built community trust  and enabled MHO  to   be a front-runner change maker in Ethiopia

Meseret Humanitarian Organization (MHO) is an award-winner and vibrant women-headed non-governmental, organization established and legally registered in 2011 with the mission of empowering and changing the personal-social, and economic status of all women and children of Ethiopia who live in poverty by giving them opportunities and support which leads to development. MHO was founded by a role model women and peace Ambassador, who had long served in the Ethiopia Red Cross and experienced first-hand how a lack of resources can lead to limited options for the youth more precisely for women. Since its establishment, MHO successfully implemented small-scale, high-impact projects that benefited over 40 villages in 5 Regional States of Ethiopia and have impacted hundreds of thousands of marginalized individuals majorly poor women and children in rural and unaddressed areas where the most marginalized Ethiopian women and children reside

In Ethiopia apart from conflict. Socio-political instability, Ethnic and religious tension, food insecurity & environmental degradation a remaining challenge & has the potential to further exacerbate existing instability.

As founder of MHO, Meseret Azageaa is Ethiopia prominent woman a peace advocate, and ambassador to Ethiopia, MHO is fascinated and takes initiatives to address this problem in an innovative way to build a peaceful community through educative actions that include, plant of fruit, trees & vegetable gardens while promoting a culture of peace values among communities. To realize this MHO has developed a project entitled “Cultivate Plants- Cultivate Peace in Ethiopia ” to raise funds in partnership with GlobalGiving.   Under this project until the time of this report we raised only 100 US dollars. Although much money was not raised under this specific project, however, with the kind support of CORTIVA, GlobalGiving, and individual donors like you,  during this reporting period MHO established another rehabilitation center with 21 thousand hectares of Agriculture land in Amara Regional state which is nearest to war-affected communities to serve people affected by conflates both from Tigray and Amhara. Activities were initially focused on one southern region  and expanded into the war-affected other regions and integrative food security and Rehabilitation

As depicted in the picture below, in this reporting period  MHO start urban gardening and harvesting on  21 thousand land and cultivated varieties of vegetables and nutritious food to feed our affected comminutes and including current children and poor women beneficiaries sheltered in our different MHO rehabilitation center in a sustainable way. Before harvesting started in this reporting period a variety of farming and planting activities were carried out as well as renovation, and site cleaning activists. Apart from reaching out to new children benefice at risk of dropping out from school due to families' inability to provide the necessary food and conflict in the next academic year, the initiative will provide emergence food for  IDP and as well as exiting children and poor women beneficiaries sheltered in our different MHO Rehabilitation center in a sustainable way. 

This in turn reduces risks of vulnerability and significantly decrease  adopts negative coping mechanisms, such as survival sex, and/or are subject to abuses such as early forced marriage and human trafficking due to food shortage while promoting resilience in their families and community

Every day we respond to every manmade and natural crisis in Ethiopia do not have opportunities; we are well aware generous Donors and partners of CORTIVA and GlobalGiving Make that Possible

In the meantime, we wanted to inform you that in this reporting period MHO Executive Director among few prominent women invited as distinguished gust from Ethiopia and Participated in Ethiopian Sports Federation in North America (ESFNA )Annual 2022, the 39th annual ESFNA festival that took place in Maryland and has been held between July 3 and July 9 at College Park.   Using this sports event platform as an opportunity for MHO to acknowledge individual donors CORTIVA and GlobalGiving Generous donation  and the impact of their donation by creating awareness through exhibiting, sharing project outcomes and impact  to tens and  thousands of Ethiopia diaspora and event percipient to recall them great pride and a sense of gratitude that the GlobalGiving individual donors CORTIVA and GlobalGiving for standing with the Ethiopian People during this critical juncture in a situation Ethiopian are currently differently affected by the compounding effect of war and multiple humanitarian crises, conflict, natural disasters, severe droughts, ethnic and religious tension, food shortages, famine, and COVID-19