ADDIS ABEBA COVID EMERGENCY FOOD RELIEF:
February 2021
Long-time Dir Biyabir partner Grace for All (GFA) was founded on September 12, 1992 and is based in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). Its objective is to improve the socio economic status of destitute children through laying the grounds for their sustainable social, physical, mental, and economical development in the target area. It aims to rehabilitate disadvantaged street and homeless children into becoming self-sufficient members of the community. Additionally, GFA works to minimize the spread of HIV/AIDS.
COVID-19 has hit the urban poor in Ethiopia very hard. In early 2021, GFA was forced to send all kids it was hosting back to their families no matter how poor they are. Only a handful of kids who had no parents to go home have stayed in GFA facilities. GFA has moved it’s center to a much smaller house to cut costs and also because the number of kids staying there has drastically been reduced.
Though the kids have been sent home, their families live in extreme poverty, some are blind or otherwise disabled, some are beggars. GFA was providing emergency food for the families of the kids it serves in Addis Abeba as well as others in the community who are living in the same extreme poverty as homeless or disabled people. Most of these folks including the kids under GFA care come from the extremely poor Mariam Wonz neighborhood in Addis Abeba (which is near the Shiro Meda area). GFA has been handing out teff and wheat flour, pasta, pasta sauce, soap, salt and tea. Occasionally they have provided eggs and meat but protein has been too expensive to provide regularly. It costs 1800 birr ($46) per family per month.
In February 2021 GFA planned another round of food distributions Dir Biyabir funded the February food distribution out of its own coffers (there was no fundraiser). In February 2021Dir Biyabir sent $5,000 USD to GFA to fund the purchase and distribution of the following food items to families in desperate need:
- 2,000kg Teff flour
- 2,000 kg wheat flour
- 1,588 packages of pasta
- 200 liters cooking oil