Families living in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are struggling to put food on the table as they experience severe drought combined with food shortages caused by ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Right now, 20 million people are at risk of going hungry.

For the first time ever, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) is putting out a crisis alert to its annual Emergency Watchlist report. The IRC is calling for urgent action in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, with specific concern for intensifying famine in Somalia that has been dangerously neglected by the international community. By the time a famine is officially declared later this year, it will be too late to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Creating Opportunities through Mentoring, Parental Involvement and Safe Spaces (COMPASS) was implemented with refugees living in camps on the Sudan/Ethiopia border, conflict-affected communities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and displaced populations in north-west Pakistan.

The IRC partners implemented the Resilience Expansion and Active Learning in Crisis (REAL) project in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and South Sudan to provide Learning through Play (LtP) training and materials in setings impacted by extended COVID-19 school closures.

“When I came here, I was on my own and I had to start from scratch.” That’s how Feven, a refugee from Ethiopia, felt when she arrived in the United States after fleeing persecution in her country. Alone in an unfamiliar place, Feven would say to herself, “Give yourself time,” a reminder that she had the power to choose how she will live her life.

Tolassa Elemaa was training to be a world class runner in Ethiopia until he became a political prisoner. Less than a year after being welcomed as a refugee by the United States, this inspiring athlete completed the New York City Marathon.

The PlayMatters project (2020 – 2026) seeks to strengthen refugee and refugee-hosting education systems’ capacity to train and support pre-primary and primary teachers to implement active LtP as an active teaching and learning method in their classrooms in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda.