Humanitarian Hunger Relief Projects
MAZON is dedicated to responding to humanitarian hunger relief efforts, domestically and abroad, during times of disaster and great need. Past and current relief efforts include:
Haiti, January 2010
MAZON raised and awarded over $350,000 in emergency grants for work in Haiti following the January earthquake. MAZON grantees quickly responded to help provide desperately-need food, water, shelter, sanitation and medical care to earthquake survivors, and to begin contributing to long-term rebuilding efforts in this devastated country. Grantees are providing aid to survivors living in Port-au-Prince, as well as to communities in the countryside and coastal areas, which are struggling to cope with an influx of thousands of displaced families fleeing the rubble. MAZON supports immediate hunger relief – the distribution of nutrient-dense food to vulnerable children living in orphanages, meals at a busy rural hospital, and community food distributions – but also efforts to boost local food production, especially among female farmers who play a central role in growing food in Haiti.
Courtesy The Lambi Fund (http://lambifund.org)
Hurricane Katrina, August 2005
Offering desperately needed relief to families that suffered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger made joint grants totaling over $1 million.
The grants spanned Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama, and supported a wide variety of programs geared towards helping hurricane victims and their families pick up
the pieces of their shattered lives and acquire the skills they needed to get back on their feet.
Since 2005, MAZON made a commitment to help rebuild the region and has granted an additional $500,000 to organizations to date.
A portion of MAZON’s Katrina-related grants were made in partnership with United Jewish Communities (UJC).
Darfur, April 2008
The United Nations World Food Program announced in April of 2008 that millions of vulnerable people throughout eastern and western Sudan would receive significantly reduced rations of food due to a severe funding shortfall.
The United Nations hoped that reducing the daily rations to as little as 1,764 kilocalories – just 84% of the minimum daily requirement of 2,100 kilocalories per person – food supplies in the region will last longer during the “hunger season,” the annual pre-harvest period from July to September, when needs are greatest.
Aid providers are were worried about the negative impact of reduced rations in Darfur and neighboring Chad, where a genocidal campaign has killed 400,000 black Africans and forced an additional 2.5 million to flee their homes in search of safer ground. Though several parties signed a peace treaty, a number of rival factions refused to add their endorsement, potentially escalating the conflict and exacerbating the devastating consequences of a food shortage.
To help combat this catastrophic shortage, MAZON raised nearly $100,000 for this effort.
Darfur Refugee Children Smile courtesy Flickr user Internews Network
Myanmar Cyclone, April 2008
MAZON partnered with long-time grantee, International Medical Corps (IMC), to provide vital assistance to help the survivors of the deadliest unprecedented natural disaster to hit Myanmar in recorded history. MAZON has committed an initial grant of $10,000 to IMC for its relief efforts.
On May 15, 2008, IMC received visas and staff were deployed to Myanmar to deliver life saving medicine and medical supplies. IMC secured millions of dollars worth of donated medicines, medical supplies and other relief items that provided initial care to approximately 50,000 people for a three-month period, including IV solutions and antibiotics to treat acute respiratory infections, diarrheal disease, cholera, malaria, dengue and typhoid fever. Once the immediate emergency subsided, IMC began the hard work of rebuilding the health, sanitation and food systems.
In the wake of this humanitarian crisis, MAZON raised over $16,000 to provide critical support to those most vulnerable in the region.
Niger, August 2005
In response to the hunger crisis in the West African country of Niger, MAZON provided a $10,000 emergency grant to Rain for the Sahel and Sahara.
The funds delivered critical food aid – including semolina, rice, pasta, oil and other foodstuffs – to some of Niger’s most impoverished and malnourished citizens. Additionally, they supported Rain’s school garden program, which seeks to teach sustainable agriculture to children in an effort to craft a long-term solution to Niger’s ongoing famine.
