Posted on May 31, 2022
Millions in Horn of Africa are in dire need of innovative water solutions
By Cathy Herholdt, World Concern Senior Communications Director
Dead livestock in Somalia. Photo: World Concern.
Here in Western Washington, we have a tendency – a compulsion, maybe even – to complain about the weather. Understandable this year especially, as we’ve had an unusually cool, damp spring.
Just last evening, I went for a walk in my neighborhood, as I do most evenings. It was sprinkling when I left the house just before dinner, but by the time I got a half mile from home, the sky opened up and unleashed a torrent of rain on me. At first, I sighed in frustration and headed back home, but as the water ran off the hood of my rain jacket, I paused and looked up, letting the water run down my face.
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Posted on May 25, 2022
We are proud to announce that in 2022 Pangea Giving is funding 13 organizations. This investment represents a total of $114,000. The Board approved the grant allocations after receiving recommendations from our three regional pods.
East Africa
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Posted on May 18, 2022
By David Albert, Olympia Friends Meeting and co-founder, Friendly Water for the World
(From Western Friend, April 2022, reposted with permission)
Climate change is here. Now. It is not a matter of an occasional snowstorm, hurricane, tornado, or short heat wave. In other parts of the globe, it is now part of the daily struggle for existence.
Friendly Water for the World, a Quaker-founded organization, partners with communities, schools, and families in parts of subSaharan Africa and India. We have seen what is happening at close hand. In central Tanzania, among the Maasai, women, who are used to walking for water every day, leaving at 3 a.m. and returning at noon, now walk as much as 13 hours each night, leaving at 11 p.m., with their daughters taken out of school for this purpose. Each and every night. In western Kenya, a Friends school reports that half of the children are leaving classes to walk for water. In some places, while rainfall hasn’t diminished, it has been concentrated into shorter, more intense periods leading to serious flooding. At the same time, dry periods are becoming longer and longer, leading to crop failures. In Chennai, in southern India, the entire city of more than seven million ran out of water for several months. People couldn’t take showers for weeks; clothes couldn’t be washed; factories shut down; restaurants closed because they couldn’t supply water to their patrons. People left for the countryside, where there was also little water to be found.
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