ETHIOPIA - Vulnerable Communities Benefit from Livelihood Opportunities - IOM has launched a nine-month programme to mitigate the impact of recurring droughts, food shortages and irregular migration on vulnerable communities living in Ethiopia's north-western Oromia zone of Amhara National Regional State.
This Japanese-funded programme will provide some 500 vulnerable families, including female-headed households, with goats, sheep and poultry to help them supplement their diet and provide additional income.
As part of this initiative, IOM has also teamed up with a leading local NGO, the Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara (ORDA), to provide young people with sustainable agricultural skills training and basic business management to help them set up self-employment schemes by establishing farms using with modern farming skills.
This support will be extended to other community members living in neighbouring administrative units, or Kebeles, through the setting-up of revolving funds that will be managed and monitored by self-help groups, local authorities and community leaders.
"These initiatives are crucial to boost the resilience of families who live in vulnerable rural communities and who often have little choice but to engage in irregular migration because of adverse climatic conditions," says Tagel Solomon, IOM's Counter-Trafficking officer in Ethiopia.
This programme builds on IOM's weekly radio shows, drama and plays designed to encourage villagers to find sustainable livelihood alternatives to irregular migration and to inform communities of the dangers of human trafficking.
Every year, thousands of young people from drought-affected areas engage in perilous journeys across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen and beyond, while others are smuggled to Tanzania via Kenya en route to South Africa, Europe and increasingly, to South and Central America.
This area, bordering on the highlands, has experienced successive failures of the Belg (short rains ending in May) and Meher (long rains which start in late July) in the past few years, resulting in low crop yields in some parts and near-crop failure in others.
The Ethiopian government and its humanitarian partners issued an update on 14 October, seeking emergency aid for an estimated 6.4 million people across the country.
This initiative is part of a broader regional project implemented in Kenya, Somaliland, Puntland, Yemen and Ethiopia, which is funded through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD)
For additional information please contact: Liyunet Demsis at IOM Addis Tel: +251115511673, Email: dliyunet@iom.int
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