From the 17^th – 23^rd January, SEDA co-hosted with the Asian Farmers Association (AFA) a conference titled ‘Consultation on the Gender Dimensions in Food Security and Climate Change.’ IFAD and FAO sponsored $4500 for the conference through AFA. Five villages participated in the conference which was held in the Attappeu Province. Partnerships on the provincial level include the village committees, the Department of Agriculture and their director and the Department of Disaster, Labour and Social Welfare and their director. The conference focused on two districts in 5  villages affected by the typhoon. Each village presented two village committees, 4 male farmers and 4 female farmers. In total there were 70 people present. The workshop discussions focused on the typhoon, climate change and how the village people are surviving after the disaster. Questions for the farmers included, is there enough food for their families? How are they surviving? Are they hungry? How are their food stocks? The results were alarming. Before the typhoon people were eating 3 solid meals per day, now they were lucky to get half a meal per day. The typhoon resulted in villages losing all of their food stocks, and 99% of their agriculture was destroyed. SEDA recognized the importance of getting food to the people as soon as possible and raised funding to provide the Food for Work Program which delivered 3000kg of rice to these villages. Global Giving donors and AFA provided these funds, $2000 for the Food for Work Program to buy rice which began in March as a result of this important conference. Please read our March report for more information. Thank you to all the donors who supported this conference, without you the Food for Work project and research would not have been possible.

Around 50 villages still need your support, please visit our Global Giving website to donate to this important cause:

http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/typhoon/

Group discussions at the conference