Children face starvation in Darfur now - urgent

We are absolutely delighted to tell you that this project is nearing completion!  Thanks to all your incredible donations, we have raised almost $100,000 that has been helping children in Darfur. It is because of people like you that we have been able to provide so many goats for milk to keep children alive and well, adopt new villages, and help in the emergency situations we have been presented with over the years. Just a few more goats and Urgent Need Packages and this project will be complete!  Can you help?

Sadly there are still many more families in villages that need help right now. This is why we have started another project, 'Help Darfur's Children Fight Famine', which we would be very grateful if you could give to going forward. Every penny counts and enables us to continue to provide our Urgent Need Packages: Goats, Flour and Seeds for families to plant right away. The harvest in Darfur will not come until December time so please can you rally as much support as possible for this project leading up until then? Thankfully the rain has come so people are planting - if they have seed.    Let's make sure they have food for next year please.  Seed for planting, and a goat for milk - these are what mothers dream of for their children.

As the holiday season approaches, we would be so grateful if you might donate a goat on behalf of a loved one. GlobalGiving has Gift Certificates you can print out, and we also make our own Gift Certificates for any occasion. You will see below an example of one of our Christmas Gift Certificates. We would be thrilled to make you a personalised certificate - and it doesn't just have to be for a goat!  Maybe your mother would like a Donkey? Your Grandfather some chickens? Anything goes! Just have a look through all the projects on our website and decide what you want to give during the festive season!  Because all our projects are sustainable, your gift will live on.

If you would like a special holiday gift certificate on its way to you or the person of your choice, please email our US volunteer, Mary Jane, at MaryJane-US@kidsforkids.org.uk and she will take care of it!  

Thank you again for continuing to support our work. We hope you join us in supporting one of our other projects as this one draws to a close.

Links:

• Help Darfur's Children Fight Famine
• Goat's make the best holiday gifts

Right now it is the end of the ‘hungry months’ in Darfur. After a summer of drought and a failed harvest, families are beginning to plant seeds again because the rains have come to almost every village in Darfur: those families who have managed to save seeds for planting.  Tragically, this year, the drought has been so extreme that many have had no alternative but to eat seeds they should be planting.  If they receive no help the situation will become even worse. 

Darfur is a place of extremes: the rain, which is so needed, also causes floods, sometimes flash floods which sweep away people, their animals and the new seeds. In one village four children were drowned recently because, having no experience of deep water, they had no idea that there was a large crater dug to make bricks.  No one can swim in Darfur.  With standing water come mosquitos. In a country where malaria is still the biggest killer, we have to ensure there are mosquito nets available for the children.

For many families this is the most challenging time of year, when there is rain but no harvest as yet, but the grass is beginning to grow and the animals will at last have fresh food - our goats will produce kids, and milk.   Children will have milk to drink.  Kids for Kids' goats are more important now as many children will have had no protein for many months. It will be another three months before people will have anything they can harvest and then have food to eat, and hopefully a surplus to sell for other essentials.

We need to continue to provide our Urgent Care Packages to those that are worst off, so they are able to survive until the harvest. It is just $40 (£30) for 90 kilos of sorghum flour which will last a family for the next three months. $25 (£19) will provide two large mosquito nets which will keep a family safe from malaria during this dangerous time of year. These are two amounts we would be thrilled if you could consider donating today.   Please help us help as many families as possible.

If you can please share this Project Report with family, friends, community groups, and colleagues who could make a donation of $25 or $40 (or more!) that would be incredible. We need as much help as we can get right now to help families survive this time of year.