Oxfam Australia

Oxfam Canada’s policy coordinator Mark Fried urges the international community to heed the warning signs, and respond to the growing food crisis in West Africa now rather when it’s too late.

Meet Peter Abwell, former pastoralist and fisherman, who now runs a bustling shop in Turkana and is something of a local celebrity. “Now I want to support others and help them learn,” he says. As Alejandro Chaskielberg discovers, Peter’s doing just that.

African football stars like Seydou Keita and Charles Kabore have joined forces with Oxfam to fight the impending food crisis in West Africa before it gets out of hand. The result? A new campaign called ‘Let’s Tackle Hunger’.

In one of Port-au-Prince’s most earthquake-damaged districts, Oxfam is helping find land for residents to grow their own vegetables. As this slide show indicates, the project is already paying off in many ways.

Two years ago, Caroline Gluck was one of the first of Oxfam’s emergency team to fly to Haiti, arriving three days after it was hit by a devastating earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people and left over a million homeless. Now she returns to see what progress has been made.

We visit Haiti, where an Oxfam livelihoods programme has provided grants, loans and training to small businesses, to help an econmy devastated by the earthquake of January 2010.

Flood-affected men and women in the Philippines had something to smile about thanks to Oxfam when they received malongs, an amazing traditional Muslim blanket that doubles as a wrap-around, water container and water purifier.

Many of the families who lost their homes to storm Sendong (international name: Washi) have since stayed in cramped evacuation centers, their personal space often defined by the size of the sleeping mat they own.