As you drive east from Nairobi, the Kenyan countryside becomes progressively drier. Long grass becomes yellow and eventually disappears. Bare, reddish soil is all you can see in the barren fields.

This is the East African drought, a vast disaster stretching across Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and beyond. Two years with scarcely any rain have withered fields and pastures, putting more than 12 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

In Kaikungu, a rural community of about 6,500 people in the Mwingi district, Eastern province, spiky green sisal plants are about the only crop that survives. In normal years, farmers grow plenty of peas, corn, beans and sorghum, but the drought has forced the community to seek food aid.

Nevertheless, local farmers are working hard to become self-sufficient. Since 2007, humanitarian workers from Church World Service and the Anglican Church of Kenya have been helping the community address long-term and systemic water shortages by building structures to capture and store water. This approach to sustainable development, called Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), aims to identify, assess and reduce vulnerabilities to disaster and to deal with the environmental and other hazards that trigger them. Disaster Risk Reduction solutions enable communities to minimize vulnerabilities, mitigate the adverse impacts of hazards, and prepare for potential disasters.

In Kaikungu, local DRR activities have included building a borehole well, two concrete tanks filled from a hilltop water catchment and six sand dams, concrete barriers that hold water in seasonal streambeds under a thick layer of sand. When it rains, water fills the stream and flows over the sand dam. In the process, the stream deposits tons of sand behind the sand dam. As the stream dries up, the sand retains water like a giant sponge and keeps it from evaporating, thus providing protection from water-borne diseases and mosquitoes that breed in stagnant water. People access the water by digging shallow wells. Effectively acting as large slow sand filters, sand dams provide a clean, secure and local year-round supply of quality potable water in water-scarce environments.

If not for these water points, life in Kaikungu would be far more difficult. Local people walk anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to fetch water, instead of the grueling, daylong treks people make in other drought-affected communities.

Water has made it possible for some families to grow vegetable gardens and to keep a few livestock long into the drought. Jessica Mutinda, 28, told me that without local water points, her family’s four cattle, 10 goats, four sheep and two donkeys would already be dead.

Because of water points, relief workers can report that severe malnutrition is still rare in Kaikungu, but the same cannot be said for the rest of Mwingi district.

On August 15, 250 local people gathered in Kaikungu to dig silt out of the community’s sand dams, restoring their capacity to hold water. To support their work and meet immediate needs, Church World Service and the Anglican Church of Kenya provided packages of corn, beans, salt and cooking oil to each participant. The food will last their families about a week, and weekly distributions are planned for the next five months. By combining food aid and sand dam repair, Church World Service and the Anglican Church of Kenya are helping the community of Kaikungu to address the root causes of their food insecurity.

The next rains should come in October, with another six months until crops can be harvested. These seasonal rains cannot come too early for the millions of people in this region who depend on rainwater for subsistence. In Kaikungu, at least, it might not be too late.

Even so, support for drought-affected communities like Kaikungu remains critically important. Unfortunately, Congress faces increasing pressure to cut funding for foreign assistance. But with your help, we can make a difference. Click here to contact your elected officials and urge them to support robust funding for humanitarian and poverty-focused foreign assistance, including emergency relief and drought risk reduction efforts.

-Tim Shenk, Church World Service

An unusually warm day for the city this time of year, walkers took their “Stop Hunger” signs on a route that included both neighborhoods and the lake front. Volunteers from the ONE Campaign also attended to collect signatures for the declaration as well as for a petition for Senator Durbin, asking him to co-sponsor the Jubilee Act.

Walkers linked their names together with signed petitions asking for Sen. Durbin to help “break the chains” of poverty. Upon returning from their meander, walkers also signed a “thank you” sign for Senator Obama for his leadership in co-sponsoring the Jubilee Act. Then, the Jesse White tumblers, all donned ONE bracelets and performed their acrobatics for the jubilant crowd.

Funds raised here in Chicago and in CROP Hunger Walks across the U.S. will make a difference in the lives of people in some 80 countries around the world – from working with AIDS orphans in Africa, to aiding farm families in Central America, and even assisting Indiana tornado survivors and Katrina hurricane survivors here in the States. CROP Walks truly are “Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty.”

-Tessa Barnes, Congregational Outreach Coordinator, Church World Service, Great Rivers/Chicago Office and ONE member
www.cropwalk.org