Media CenterDr. Jill Biden visits Catholic Relief Services in Malawi

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

US CONTACT:          
Tom Price
Catholic Relief Services
(410) 951-7450
[email protected]

AFRICA CONTACT:
Nancy McNally
Catholic Relief Services
+254 (0) 733330008
[email protected]

BALTIMORE, MD, July 19, 2016 – The Second Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden, paid a visit today to Manchinjiri in southern Malawi, where Catholic Relief Services (CRS) manages a USAID Food for Peace program to respond to the El Nino-driven drought emergency. The entire Southern Africa region is in the grips of severe drought, with 22 million people facing hunger, including 6.5 million people in Malawi.

As many as 36 million people are expected to be food insecure between now and early 2017, when the next harvests come in and the lean season ends.

Dr. Biden visited the United in Building and Advancing Life Expectations (UBALE) project, which is currently focusing on working with communities to build out and rehabilitate water catchment schemes such as dikes and dams, and improve soil conservation such as by planting trees and grass, under a food for work scheme that is helping the community through the lean season while building their resilience to future climatic shocks.

The UBALE program is wide-ranging and also aims to improve both agricultural production and diversity by training farmers in the field on growing maize, sorghum, millet, vegetables, pulses, sesame, soya and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, thus improving nutrition as well. Farmers access seeds and cuttings through a voucher program under UBALE, so they can choose which crops they plant.

In addition, mothers learn about hygiene, nutrition and feeding their children healthy meals through mothers’ groups, and farmers link up in cooperative structures that give them more influence when trying to sell their produce on the market. Incomes are improved, which also has a secondary effect on nutrition.

Further, the communities also benefit from trainings in the CRS community-level savings and loans model, SILC (Savings and Internal Lending Communities), so that group savings can be created. The funds can be used to build assets for the wider community and strengthen their resilience to natural disasters such as El Nino when they hit.

According to the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), one in four children is affected by stunting, meaning their physical and mental development risks being permanently affected due to a lack of food and vital nutrients.

Dr. Biden announced during the course of today’s events that the US government would be providing additional assistance of $20 million to Malawi via the World Food Programme, bringing US assistance in response to the drought crisis to $75 million to date in the country.

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Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. The agency alleviates suffering and provides assistance to people in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding. For more information, please visit crs.org or crsespanol.org and follow CRS on social media: Facebook, @CatholicRelief, @CRSnews, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest.