Food impact report - Winter 2024

An update on MCC food projects

Zero Mawang Juch (left) and Sudan Koang Ruei at the distribution site with a portion of food supplies. Each bag of sorghum is about 15kgs, so it is heavy for program participants to carry on their heads and back to their homes.

South Sudan Ukraine — Jan 2024

menu_book Impact report
Food
January 15, 2024

Your gift in Mary's hands

 

Mary Nyashin Tsief (70) stands in front of her home in Rubkona camp for people displaced by flooding and violent conflict. She is accompanied by her two grandchildren, Nyamen Iuok Ram (age 5) and Nyawich Iuok Ram (age 3), who live in a tent adjacent to hers.
Mary Nyashin Tsief stands in front of her home in Rubkona’s Internally Displaced People’s camp with her grandchildren. With the generous support of MCC donors like you, Mary's family has received vital emergency food rations for the past year. (MCC photo/Mackenzie Schwarz) 

Food rations from donors like you feed families on the brink in South Sudan

Mary Nyashin Tsief has been living in the Rubkona Internally Displaced Peoples Camp in South Sudan for the past four years. Her family is among the hundreds of thousands of people displaced within Unity State due to immense flooding. These disasters have wiped out crops, farms, livestock and all cultivable soil, making it nearly impossible to grow food or access markets. Violence and economic turmoil have exacerbated those challenges meaning Mary’s family often doesn’t have food to eat. 

But thanks to you, MCC’s partner, Episcopal Church of South Sudan-South Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (ECSS-SSUDRA), has provided 800 families (3,071 people) with emergency food baskets every month for an entire year. Priority has been given to families like Mary's who have no source of reliable funds to purchase food and no ability to produce their own food.

Two-thirds of South Sudan's population depend entirely on humanitarian assistance to survive. Your generous support has been critical to ensure families like Mary's do not go hungry.

Emergency food relief to South Sudan

Mary Nyashin Tsief (70) is a beneficiary of an emergency food project in Rubkona, South Sudan. She has been living in the Rubkona camp for people displaced by flooding and violent conflict for four years. She holds water lily roots and bulbs to show what she would be eating to survive if her family had not received the regular food rations.
Prior to receiving monthly food packages that donors like you helped make possible, Mary and her family would go into the floodwaters to forage water lily bulbs (pictured here). With your compassionate support, Mary and her family have monthly rations of sorghum, beans, cooking oil and salt to supplement their diet. (MCC photo/Mackenzie Schwarz) 

You are helping save lives with sorghum and salt

Sorghum is a grain that is commonly distributed in South Sudan as part of emergency food packages. The monthly packages that South Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (SSUDRA) has distributed with your generous support included 15kg bags of sorghum alongside beans, cooking oil and salt to meet people's basic nutritional needs. Here's why in a country like South Sudan, sorghum is the grain of choice:

  • Unmilled sorghum can be prepared in multiple ways and is a key ingredient for many local staple dishes.
  • Sorghum has an extended shelf-life compared to other grains like flour which means it can be transported far distances over longer periods of time without spoiling.
  • Sorghum is less sensitive to moisture than grains like flour. Given that transportation is often by boat and that recipients often live in shelters that leak, unmilled sorghum is a more dependable ration.
  • Sorghum needs to be milled and families like Mary's who receive unmilled sorghum in their food packages also receive the money they need to mill their sorghum. 
Mary Nyashin Tsief (70) stands in front of her home in Rubkona camp for people displaced by flooding and violent conflict. She is accompanied by her two grandchildren, Nyamen Iuok Ram (age 5) and Nyawich Iuok Ram (age 3), who live in a tent adjacent to hers. Mary Nyashin Tsief (70) stands in front of her home in Rubkona camp for people displaced by flooding and violent conflict. She is accompanied by her two grandchildren, Nyamen Iuok Ram (age 5) and Nyawich Iuok Ram (age 3), who live in a tent adjacent to hers.
The life here in the camp is good and difficult. Before I was registered with SSUDRA we were really suffering a lot. We went into the floodwaters to collect the water lily bulbs — that was what we had to eat to survive. But now things are better.

Mary Nyashin Tsief

South Sudan

Partner spotlight:

Episcopal Church of South Sudan – South Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (ECSS-SSUDRA)

The Episcopal Church of South Sudan-South Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (ECSS-SSUDRA) is the relief and development arm of the Episcopal church mandated to facilitate the emergency and development programs and building capacity of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan institutions and dioceses to identify and prioritize community needs, act to reduce poverty and hunger, and effectively deliver lifesaving services for improving livelihoods in communities. This organization was established in the 1970s to offer humanitarian relief services across the province of the ECSS.

Feeding hope in Ukraine

Anna receives food and psychosocial support from MCC partner Step With Hope. She and her husband fled her home after it was destroyed during the Russian invasion.
The town that Anna called home has been completely destroyed in the ongoing conflict with Russia. She and her husband fled to the Dnipropetrovsk region where they were met with open arms by MCC partner Step with Hope. Through your compassionate support, Anna received the psychological and practical help she needed to take the first steps to begin rebuilding her life. (Step With Hope photo/Izabella Vaschinina)
You're helping Ukrainians fleeing violence and war access essential food and hygiene kits

More than one hundred years ago, MCC cared for those fleeing present-day Ukraine, ultimately helping many of them make a new home in Canada years later. Today, with the compassionate support of MCC donors like you, we honour our history and forge ahead into the future by extending help and hope to our global neighbours in Ukraine.

Through the work of Step with Hope, you are helping ensure emergency assistance is reaching Ukraine's internally displaced people in communities across the Dnipropetrovsk region. When people arrive at Step with Hope's door, they typically have nothing except valuable documents and the clothes on their back. The emergency food and hygiene packages MCC donors have helped to provide are essential as they contain everything from diapers and toothpaste to flour and tea. 

As Ukrainians emerge from a long, cold winter where fuel shortages reigned, rent was high and employment opportunities were low, your support has been invaluable to ensure they have had access to the necessities they need to survive. 

A big thank you from us and on behalf of all elderly people who have been disadvantaged by the war, that you care so much, that you help us and do not leave us alone with these difficulties.

Anna

Ukraine

A legacy of generosity

 

A man and woman smiling taking a selfie style photo
Jonathan and Liana Toews are leaving a legacy of generosity with a gift to MCC in their will. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan and Liana Toews)

Jonathan and Liana Toews, from Altona, Man., have supported the work of MCC for many years. Recently, they decided to leave MCC a legacy gift in their will on top of their already generous active support.

Learn more about how you can leave MCC a gift in your will here. 

We hope that the wealth we have accumulated can contribute to a better world in some way, to be part of something bigger than us because life itself is a gift. We know that this decision looks different for everyone, but for us, we are happy to leave a gift for MCC in our will.

Jonathan and Liana Toews