Now my children can get nutritious food

Tuesday 1 December 2020

Tiruwork, 50, is a mother of seven children and a grandson who lives in Adama town, in the Oromia Regional state. Tiruwork’s family is one of the several families whose lives and livelihoods has been upset by the Coronavirus  pandemic in the area. As a result, the family was selected as one of the cash beneficiaries Save the Children supports with its cash assistance project for households impacted by COVID-19 through funding from USAID. 

 

For the past nine months, schools have been closed due to the Coronavirus and my children were not going.   However, for the past two weeks, schools have been reopened and two of my children have continued their education. 

Before, she used to run a small business and supported my family by selling local liquor (Aareke) and food to her local customers. However, she was injured in a recent car accident and was unable to work as usual, to make things worse, the new disease came  and made everything dark. Even before the Coronavirus , the local community in this area was mostly low-income family, leading a hand to mouth kind of life. Now, most families are unable to feed their children.   

 

Now Tiruwork supports her family with the small earning she gets by selling charcoal here in front of her home and with the small financial support that she had received from her daughter. Since the virus , their lives are worse than ever. These days, she's unable to provide sufficient food to her children. Without this recent financial support, the problem would have been even worse.

She usually feed her children Injera with shiro sauce and occasionally provide them with pasta or rice. However, in recent days, due to the sudden increment in pasta and rice prices and they had stopped eating these foods. She had been receiving 2000 birr a month from the cash project since last September and with the cash support that she had received, she had managed to buy food for her children and used some leftover money to pay her mounting debts. Now she’s quite relieved that her children get enough and nutritious foods.

 

With the next support  she gets, she plans to buy more food for her kids as wells aspire to expand her business.  If things get better she hopes to pay some of her debt at the nearby shop. 

 

Save the Children, through the Emergency Food Assistance for household affected by corona pandemic for six months. This support will enable families to buy food and other necessities.

The project is funded by USAID with a budget of nine million USD for six months. The project aims to increase household access and consumption of diverse nutritious food. It will be implemented in Addis Abeba, Adama, Dire Dawa, Jigjiga, Hawassa and Bahirdar reaching 29,035 households (Approximately 170,000 people).