The second largest country of Africa, full of paradoxes. On one hand, it is rich in natural resources (including cobalt, copper, coltan, crude oil, diamonds, gold); on the other hand, its inhabitants are among the poorest in the world. For decades, the DRC has been suffering from prolonged conflicts that have led to one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world.
17.09.2021
The food crisis is worsening. 41 million people are at risk of ‘catastrophic hunger’, which is the highest level on the five-phase IPC acute food insecurity scale. It describes the condition of a person who has not eaten for a long time, and the complications and weakened state of the body associated with malnutrition mean that they could die at any time. This means that even the slightest rise in prices, crop failures, armed conflict, loss of land or income have dramatic consequences for millions of people.
In East Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we have been funding a hospital and nutrition centre for the past 7 years, the situation continues to escalate. UNHCR reports that violence perpetrated by armed groups has led to 25,000 human rights violations since January and has forced more than 1 million people in the area to flee their homes this year alone.
We quote overwhelming figures, but we always stress the fact that statistics don’t have faces – people do. Like Esther, our two-year-old patient who was miraculously saved by the Ntamugenga hospital team. Hunger disease had devastated her body to such an extent that when she was admitted to the ward her haemoglobin level was only 4.5 compared to the norm of 11 g/dL. She was one step away from the abyss from which we managed to turn her back thanks to you! Such miracles happen here every day, but they are not possible without you.
This year more than 950 million people will have insufficient food. 20 million will be born with malnutrition. By the time you finish reading this text, 5 children will have died of hunger. Our aim is not to make anyone feel guilty nor to expose the brutality of the reality around us. Our aim is to make sure that no one is led to believe that they have no influence over this situation. Hunger is not an abstract concept – it is a human being, a hungry human being whom we can feed TODAY. No other scourge has ever been so devastating – and yet so easy to combat – as hunger. Each one of us can at this moment push this world just a little bit in the right direction. A therapeutic meal costs only 15 PLN at GoodWorks 24/7 and this may be the best investment of 15 PLN by each of us today!
If you can, please share, let as many good people as possible know about the needs of our little ones!
Produce some GOOD with us!!!
22.10.2024
“Eat it all, my little one, mommy has already eaten something. She’s not hungry.” For many children, the weight of these words, spoken by mothers with sad smiles, will only be understood in adulthood. This is the daily math problem faced by countless women in Congo: how to divide a single meal among many, when […]
16.09.2024
Globally, hunger is a massive, complex problem. But feeding a child is simple. Joseph could have become another WHO statistic, labeled as one of the children who dies of hunger every five seconds. No one would have known his name or how infectiously he laughs while playing patty-cake with his mom. That he’s brave and […]
04.09.2024
“We’ve got a two-year-old boy from Kabaya,” Sister Agnieszka reports. Even before we see the photo, we already know it will show a child in critical condition. Kabaya is a mountainous area, almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. There is a lack of everything. The fields are mined, making it impossible […]
