Food Distribution

Women Waiting for food distribution

As part of the nutritional component of our project, we provide the family with Teff and Oil on a regular basis, as well as giving them hygiene items – vaseline, hair oil, and bars of soap.

Today was the day! Today we provided almost 400 kg of Teff, 20 liters of oil, 60 bars of soap, 30 jars of vaseline and 30 bottles of Hair Oil. What an amazing time we had.

We were told that we had picked "konjo" or "beautiful" Teff. We were glad that it was a blessing for these moms.

The women distributed the Teff to each other

I was struck by a number of things today. One was the willingness to serve each other. We broke into groups and had a group member distribute the Teff by measuring it out of the main bags and giving it to other mothers. It was sweet watching women working together, giving preference to each other and communicating with each other as they did so.

I also was struck by the spirit of giving. Because of a current shortage of oil here, we were unable to get more than 20 liters of cooking oil to distribute. We usually would be giving 1 liter of oil per household, but the shortage meant that we only had 20 liters instead of 30 liters. I was so blessed to hear some of the women say that they would go without over the weekend so that someone else could have oil.

Yeshi & Emawayesh receiving cooking oil

This was especially striking since this coming weekend is Easter Sunday and is cause for great feasting.

We’ll be distributing to families again in about 6 weeks, when we will give each family 12.5kg of Teff, 1 liter of oil, soap, hair oil and vaseline.  Please pray for these families as they use the Teff over the weekend to bake injera and prepare for Easter.

Serikalem, mother of Sintayehu

Mariyu - mother of Senayit