Climate Change: Helping Women & Children in Uganda

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This month, through the Global Team of 200 we are helping raise awareness and attention for Shanti Uganda which improves infant and maternal health, provides safe women-centered care and supports the well-being of birthing mothers and women living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.

According to Shanti Uganda, “all projects are locally initiated and supported with a deep sense of solidarity and ownership. Work on the ground is supported through the time, passion and employment of the local communities. As well, all projects reflect a deep respect for the earth and each project is able to sustain itself over time and provide long-lasting benefits for generations to come. ShantiUganda also believes strongly in promoting and supporting the power of traditional healing, wisdom, culture and community. All projects are rooted in cultural sensitivity and reflect the knowledge of the given community.”

The United Nations Population Fund tells us that: “Women in many developing countries are usually in charge of securing water, food and fuel and of overseeing family health and diet. Therefore, they tend to put into immediate practice whatever they learn about nutrition and preserving the environment and natural resources.” This also means that women are most often on the front lines of seeing, feeling and experiencing climate change. Providing women in developing countries with access to health care services and family planning can relieve some of the direct pressures on them that they are feeling from our changing climate and allow them to focus on tasks at hand.

According to Relief Web, a digital service of the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Uganda is highly vulnerable to climate change and variability – its economy and the wellbeing of its people are tightly bound to climate. Human induced climate change in the coming century has the potential to halt or reverse the country’s development trajectory. In particular, climate change is likely to mean increased food insecurity; shifts in the spread of diseases like malaria; soil erosion and land degradation; flood damage to infrastructure and settlements and shifts in the productivity of agricultural and natural resources. It will be the poor and vulnerable who feel these impacts the hardest, though climate change has serious implications for the nation’s economy, with for example, a shift in the viability of coffee growing areas potentially wiping out US $265.8 million or 40% of export revenue. Exacerbating poverty and triggering migration as well as heightened competition over strategic water resources, climate change could lead to regional insecurity.

Looking closely at life in the developing world is important for all of as – our kids included – as many, many things we take for granted in the developed world – access to clean and safe drinking water, electricity, internet access, food security – are not common or easily accessible in the developing world. We also need to recognize OUR responsibility in helping to accelerate and set in motion human caused climate change and the realities that come with this in the developing world; where they are much less able to adapt to changes then we are. Climate change is global, what we do here in the USA has impacts all over the world. You can help the women and children of Uganda by supporting Shanti Uganda. There are various ways to donate directly:

• Purchase an acre of land
• Provide social power for the birth house
• Provide medical supplies and emergency transport for deliveries
• Provide a place for Shanti Uganda to call home

Grab the kids in your life, visit the Shanti Uganda website and together learn more about what we all can do to help families around the world!

Yours,

Climate Mama