CARE, Save the Children and World Vision Split $1 Million for Aid in Ethiopia

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Three international aid organizations—CARE, Save the Children and World Vision—announced today the receipt of grants totaling $1 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The gifts will support ongoing drought relief efforts in the East African country of Ethiopia.

Already parched by several years of below-average rainfall, Ethiopia was robbed this year of its rain, leaving nearly 8 million people on the brink of starvation. Most Ethiopian farmers use traditional planting methods and do not have the resources to irrigate their small plots of land. The effects of the drought have resulted in barren fields, malnourished families and dead livestock. Unlike the 1984-1985 drought, when nearly 1 million people died, CARE, Save the Children and World Vision will have the mechanisms in place to deliver relief and head off a potential famine with help from this grant.

Hugh Parmer, a U.S. Agency for International Development official, who oversees the U.S. government's response to the drought conditions in the Horn of Africa, praised the announcement. "Through the combined efforts of private foundations, nonprofit organizations and government agencies, we will make a difference in preventing devastating drought conditions from turning into widespread famine."

Of the $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CARE and World Vision each received $350,000 and Save the Children received $300,000.

CARE, working in Ethiopia since 1984, will use the grant money to provide seeds, tools and medicines to roughly 100,000 people, and will distribute 400 tons of food to more than 25,000 of the most vulnerable people in Farta Woreda in the South Gondor Zone.

Save the Children, working in Ethiopia since 1984, will expand its existing Gode feeding centers, and will establish a feeding center in the Afdheer Zone, south of Gode, for malnourished children. Additionally, programs will help to re-establish food security by vaccinating livestock.

World Vision, operating in Ethiopia since 1971, will open feeding centers for malnourished children, pregnant women and nursing mothers in and around Gode Town, and will provide seeds and tools to more than 24,000 farmers in other Ethiopian communities.