Live Below The Line - The Amara family
This May (7-11), Christian Aid invites you to take up the challenge to live on just £1 a day for food and drink for 5 days to help some of the world’s poorest people.
Kadiatu Amara, known as Kadi, lives in the village of Njala in Bonthe District, amongst the hungriest regions in Sierra Leone, one of the hungriest countries in the world.
Despite its vast areas of fertile land, Bonthe District has seen little development in recent decades and consequently the vast majority of households are unable to grow or purchase enough food for their families.
They generally survive on one meal of cassava or rice a day.
Kadi was distraught when her son Junisa was diagnosed as suffering from malnutrition. Her father Amara Baggie, with whom she, Junisa and her daughter Sarian live, works hard to provide for the whole family under his care, but depending on subsistence farming, he simply cannot grow enough.
When Kadi stopped breastfeeding Junisa his health deteriorated and he became dangerously thin.
With support from a nearby clinic, Kadi is nursing Junisa back to health. She is hopeful that a new project delivered by Christian Aid partner the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone (MCSL) will ensure other mothers in her community do not go through the same experience.
This project will bring together the community to cultivate cassava and rice. They will receive seeds, tools and training to help them move beyond subsistence farming.
‘If we are supported in the area of rice production it would be of immense help to us. We’ll have enough food in the community to feed ourselves and our children’. Kadi Amara
Live Below the Line will not only raise essential funds to help people like the Amara family eat more than just one meal a day, but it will also raise awareness about the 1.4 billion people who live below the poverty line.
Find out more about MCSL and the work of Christian Aid
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