Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Awards $500,000 in Emergency Assistance for Severe Food Crisis in West Africa’s hard-hit Sahel Region

The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation has awarded grants totaling $500,000 to support the work of two humanitarian organizations providing assistance to people affected by a rapidly escalating food crisis in the western Sahel, a large swath of Africa south of the Sahara Desert that has been hard hit by recurrent droughts.

LOS ANGELES, July 9, 2012 – The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation has awarded grants totaling $500,000 to support the work of two humanitarian organizations providing assistance to people affected by a rapidly escalating food crisis in the western Sahel, a large swath of Africa south of the Sahara Desert that has been hard hit by recurrent droughts. The Hilton Foundation grants were divided between Mercy Corps and Catholic Relief Services, both of whom are aiding people in Niger.

Image of the food crisis in Sahel
Filingue, Niger. A Mercy Corps nutrition specialist examines Hazidatou’s grandchild by measuring his arm circumference. The 19-month of child was diagnosed as severely malnourished. The Tillaberi region of Niger is the hardest-hit by the drought and food crisis and has the country’s highest rate of acute malnutrition (14 percent, with children under age 5 are affected most), and the situation is growing more serious with each day. Late rains and insect damage at the end of 2011 left between 70 and 100 percent of farmers with no crops to harvest. With no stored crops and little grazing for weakened livestock, few people have adequate food. Mercy Corps is supporting Nutritional Screening Centers throughout the Tillaberi region and is supporting the distribution of PlumpyNut at government Health Centers. Photo courtesy of Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps.

“The Sahel food crisis is rapidly becoming a full blown catastrophe affecting millions of people, especially children. More than one million children under five are threatened with severe malnutrition this year,” said Steven M. Hilton, Chairman, President and CEO of the Foundation. “We felt compelled to step forward and join those in the international community who are working to alleviate this crisis.”

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently described the situation as “a cascading crisis” and called on the global community to act quickly to prevent mass famine from taking hold.

Recurrent cycles of drought, chronic environmental degradation, lack of investment in development, population growth and poverty have progressively reduced the ability of millions of Sahel residents to ride out the periodic crises they face. As a result, the current drought has forced people across the region to undertake survival measures such as rationing food, selling off cattle and migrating from their farms to urban centers to seek food. The situation is compounded by political unrest in Mali and Nigeria that has displaced 200,000 people into neighboring countries.

Mercy Corps, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, works in transitional environments that have experienced significant shock from natural disaster, economic collapse or conflict and seeks to turn these situations into opportunities for progress. In Niger’s Tillabéri region, it will use the $250,000 Hilton Foundation grant to provide urgently needed immediate assistance and build resilience for 12,600 people over the longer term. Mercy Corps has 53 staff in Niger where it has worked since 2005 to address chronic drought-related food security issues. With the Hilton grant, Mercy Corps will provide immediate assistance through cash-for-work activities to prepare communal gardening plots. To promote self sufficiency over the longer term, it will enable female heads of households to pursue agricultural work to feed their families and generate income. Among its initiatives are distributing goats that are locally purchased; training women on crop production, conservation, storage and marketing; and providing them with drought-resistant seeds and tools. It also plans community-managed microfinance initiatives.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS), headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, will use its $250,000 grant to provide immediate and longer term assistance for 10,400 vulnerable people in the Ouallam and Tillabéri areas of Niger. CRS, which helps populations in the developing world break the cycle of poverty through community-based, sustainable development initiatives, has worked in Niger since 1991 and has 115 staff in country. The people they will assist with the Hilton Foundation funds rely on crop production for food and income. Due to the drought, they are being forced to resort to emergency coping strategies that are damaging over the long-term. CRS will implement cash-for-work projects that will provide the vulnerable households with the income they need to purchase food, while at the same time rehabilitating local water supplies and promoting topsoil retention in order to increase their resilience to future droughts.

“The Hilton Foundation recognizes that recovery and preparedness support programs that help build local capacity and resilience are just as important as providing relief assistance,” said Edmund J. Cain, the Foundation’s Vice President, Grant Programs. “This grantmaking approach is very much aligned with recommendations made in a report we recently commissioned, In Practice: Philanthropic Grantmaking for Disasters. The cash-for-work programs that both Mercy Corps and CRS are implementing in Niger will provide immediate relief to people impacted by the food crisis, while also providing training and tools to enable better agricultural and livestock production opportunities for the future.”

Disaster response is one of the Hilton Foundation’s major priority areas. Since 1989, the Foundation has awarded $24 million to support programs for international and domestic disasters. For more information, please visit our Disaster Relief and Recovery page.

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Resources

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Hilton Foundation: @hiltonfound
Mercy Corps: @mercycorps
Catholic Relief Services: @CatholicRelief

About Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation was created in 1944 by international business pioneer Conrad N. Hilton, who founded Hilton Hotels and left his fortune to help the world’s disadvantaged and vulnerable people. The Foundation currently conducts strategic initiatives in five priority areas: providing safe water, ending chronic homelessness, preventing substance abuse, caring for vulnerable children, and extending Conrad Hilton’s support for the work of Catholic Sisters. Following selection by an independent international jury, the Foundation annually awards the $1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize to a nonprofit organization doing extraordinary work to alleviate human suffering. From its inception, the Foundation has awarded more than $1 billion in grants and in 2011 distributed $82 million to organizations in the U.S. and throughout the world. The Foundation’s current assets are approximately $2 billion. For more information, please visit www.hiltonfoundation.org.

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