The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world.
ETHIOPIA: Even though families
receive food rations, they need firewood to cook. For most, just like in many rural settings in Africa, they can only use firewood as they lack stoves. People have to walk up to five kilometres to fetch firewood. This is particularly difficult for the old, disabled, pregnant women and nursing mothers. At the Red Cross distribution site at the Leitchour camp, volunteers have been busy distributing the firewood and bars of soap to groups of refugees. In two rounds, 2,600 households received 72 kilograms of firewood which can last one month.
TANZANIA: Families in Morogoro’s Dakawa and Kilosa area, 270 kilometres northwest of Tanzania’s capital Dar es Salaam, are rebuilding their lives following flash floods that left a massive trail of destruction earlier in the year, affecting at least 10,000 people. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is helping the Tanzania Red Cross Society in assisting 2,000 people affected by the floods. With the help of the Red Cross, families have now constructed shelters at a temporary site allocated to them by the Government of Tanzania, as they wait to be settled permanently on safer grounds. As part of the emergency operation, Tanzania Red Cross Society volunteers carried out hygiene promotion to prevent an outbreak of diseases, and provided water and sanitation facilities and shelter materials. They also offered psychosocial support.