When drought hits and families are struggling to survive, the solutions don’t always have to be complicated or expensive. As I learnt from our team in Ethiopia last year, something as simple as a sack can mean the difference between hunger and happiness for a farming family.

Our team has been helping communities in Ethiopia since the first signs of drought began more than two years ago, bringing fresh water, food, medicine and supplies to those who need them most. But where a few crops can still grow, in the Oromia Region on the edge of the dry zone, our team has also found a straightforward way to increase harvests and give families more food to go around.

When maize and sorghum crops are harvested, farmers traditionally store them in pits dug below ground. The grains are used to make injera pancakes, the staple diet for most families in this part of Ethiopia, so it’s important that they last as long as possible. But drought makes for a meager harvest to begin with, and pests, bugs and mold all take their toll, leaving up to 40 per cent of the harvest ruined.

Last year our local staff decided to find a way to stop so much of the harvest going to waste.

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Mercy Corps today announced that it will be one of the nonprofit partners of “We Can Be Heroes” – an unprecedented campaign launched by DC Entertainment to raise awareness and funds to fight the hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Mercy Corps is one of three humanitarian organizations selected by DC Entertainment to benefit from the campaign that will equally share a corporate donation of at least $2 million over the next two years comprised of cash donations and consumer matching funds. The other partner organizations are Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee.

“We Can Be Heroes allows each of us to be a hero in our everyday lives by helping families in dire need. Mercy Corps is thrilled to be part of this creative and inspiring campaign,” said Neal Keny-Guyer, CEO, Mercy Corps. “The campaign also allows us to serve the most heroic people we know: the people of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya who constantly battle life-threatening challenges with extraordinary grace.”

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In many places around the world, women have less visibility, power and status in their communities than do men — an imbalance that makes women more vulnerable to threats, coercion and abuse. Violence against women can be sexual, physical, emotional or economic. Because it arises from power differences based on gender, it's called gender-based violence, or GBV. (Men and boys can be victims of GBV too, but the vast majority of victims are women and girls.)

The risk of GBV increases during conflicts, emergencies and natural disasters — the very environments in which Mercy Corps works — because these crises cause social structures to break down, making women even more vulnerable. Mercy Corps takes very seriously its responsibility to mitigate the risks of GBV and protect people in the communities we serve.

As part of our agency-wide effort to ensure that all our programs carefully consider issues of power, vulnerability and GBV, we recently sent GBV specialist Kevin McNulty to observe our programs in the Horn of Africa.

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