For families in the rural district of Amolatar in north-central Uganda, simply staying alive over the past several weeks has become a major challenge. Not only have COVID lockdowns caused families to lose all sources of income and skyrocketed food prices but now environmental dangers are threatening food security and overall health in the district.

At the end of April, FAF Co-Founder & Country Director, Collines Angwech, connected with local leaders in Amolatar District where we work to discuss how we could make the biggest impact with the small budget that we have after having lost virtually all of our US Fundraising activities to stay-at-home restrictions.

Together with local volunteers, FAF Co-Founder & Uganda Country Director, Collines Angwech (left) packaged 4 Tons of posho to be delivered to vulnerable families in Amolatar District.

“The government is going to be providing food aid, but it’s going to be slow,” Collines told our US Team in a recent phone call. “In the past two weeks, they’ve only reached a few districts near Kampala, so families in Northern Uganda are going to be at major risk of starvation if they wait too long.”

Just a week later, we heard more unfortunate news — Lake Kyoga has burst the shorelines and flooded hundreds of homes in our region of Amolatar. Last week, news reports began pouring in, detailing how gardens & fisheries have been destroyed and hundreds of families have been displaced from their homes and pit latrines have overflowed, pouring sewage into families’ compounds — creating a breeding ground for cholera. Citizens in these communities have publicly pleaded the government to reduce lockdown measures so they can access transportation and food to seek refuge elsewhere after their homes were destroyed. As if things weren’t scary enough, locust swarms across northern Uganda continue to further complicate an already fragile food-security crisis.

People in our community of Namasale and across Amolatar District are desperate for support to simply stay alive through COVID lockdowns. This past month, we asked all of you to join us in taking action and asked you to become Advocates for children, families and communities who are fighting for survival amidst this crisis. We still need 141 Advocates to continue making an impact and protecting families at risk - click here to become an Advocate.

You all answered that call in a big way.

Earlier this month, (thanks to our community of Advocates and several generous donors) Collines and her team of friends, family & local volunteers in Uganda loaded 4 TONS of food aid onto a truck draped with banners that read “Fighting COVID Together: Food Support from Far Away Friends” and drove three hours from Lira to Amolatar District Headquarters to officially hand over life-saving food relief to local leaders for distribution

Thanks to the support of our Advocates & donors, 1,000 families across Amolatar District will receive life-saving food support.

In partnership with the Amolatar District COVID Task Force, the food aid our Advocates & donor community helped purchase this month will provide 1,000 Families with over 10lbs of posho (a Ugandan staple food) to carry them through the next several weeks as they await government aid from Kampala.

Together, we helped to provide food to 1,000 vulnerable families this month!

As if this wasn’t enough of an accomplishment, Far Away Friends MADE NATIONAL NEWS IN UGANDA!

Since Far Away Friends is among some of the only NGOs supporting vulnerable families in Amolatar District, your gift of food aid made national headlines on NBS TV and on radios across Uganda! Thanks the support of our Advocates & donors, our contributions as Far Away Friends are becoming widely known throughout the Lango sub-region. Check out the NBS TV story below:

We are SO grateful for our community of Advocates & donors for making this delivery of life-saving food relief possible.

While we celebrate this accomplishment, we know that the road ahead is going to be extremely difficult. As stated in the NBS video, famine in our region is “imminent” and we MUST work to continue protecting our students, teachers and their families from starvation.

We need your help to find 141 more Advocates by June 30th.

Our mission to find 250 Advocates by June 30th to provide sustainable monthly income to protect our students, Teachers & their families isn’t stopping here. We need your help to find 141 more people to join our community in order to continue this work since we’ve lost all of our planned fundraising events.

You can help by sharing our work with your friends, family, church group, colleagues or community and asking them to join you in becoming an Advocate for vulnerable families for $25/month.