EMERGENCY RELIEF
Occasionally the AACDP hears about a sudden emergency situation involving a person or family within our community. Here are some of the crises we were able to respond to by broadcasting a plea for support through emails, newsletters and crowdsourcing.
In 2010 a friend in Zambia wrote to me that Holliness Moomba, a young woman she knew had witnessed four members of her family killed by a drunk driver who plowed into their small house.
Holliness Moomba and her family at the site of the new home
Her mother, the sole wage earner of the family, was one of the deceased, and the family was destitute. The AACDP raised about $1000, which paid for the funeral and gave the family a start on building a traditional house on land her mother had bought years before. Later we helped Holliness go to nursing school.
In 2018 Sydney Mwamba, the general manager of the AACDP in Zambia, told me that his native village of Jack Mwanapapa was in the second year of a serious drought and that the Nansazu River, their source of water for centuries, had completely dried up.
The village of Jack Mwanapapa celebrates their solar water system
Theirs was an agricultural village, with abundant vegetable fields and fruit orchards, but everything was parched and there was nothing to sell, and worse, nothing to eat. It was a crisis. The AACDP mounted a GoFundMe campaign and found some very generous donors to finance a solar watering system. Systems like this are now being widely used in Africa by those lucky enough to afford them; because of climate change, water is becoming scarce for so many.
Many of our projects fall under the heading "Emergency Relief" (see Pandemic Food Drive and Aid for Dependents). Our aim is that our long range projects, such as the Communal Farm, enhance the community's resources, resiliency and future well-being, so that future emergencies may be less devastating.