Safety Net in Times of Need!

Amina Abdullah Muhammad Yahiya, a thirty-year-old woman. She is one of thousands of people displaced by conflict in Yemen in 2015. The longer the war continues to evolve, the harder it becomes for them to survive. For Amina and her old sick mother, meeting basic needs is always impossible. They suffer in silence from lack of water, food, healthcare, clothing, and shelter.

Amina said: “I used to work in a private hospital on the outskirts of Bajil district, but after the war started, the hospital closed and I was forced to sit at home without any source of income. I spent most of my time taking care of my sixty-four-year-old mother who suffers from diabetes as a result of the violent aerial bombardment on the city.” She added.

She sorrowfully continued: “I could no longer sit at home without doing anything for my family, without having a reason to survive. Therefore, I had to risk myself to get the necessary sustenance because I am the only one supporting my elderly mother. I found a job in a clinic with a very simple salary that hardly reaches 20 dollars a month and it is never enough to cover life basic needs as well as my mother’s medicine.”

To assist those in need including Amina, her mother, and her family, Relief and Development Peer Foundation (RDP), funded by Sign of Hope (SoH), has made a crucial move by taking serious steps to alleviate hunger in all its aspects and dimensions and to ensure that people in dire need would have sustainable income through the emergency food security and livelihoods project.

Amina was one of the beneficiaries who was targeted during the emergency food assistant and livelihoods project. It became easy for her to cover her family’s needs and to provide them with the necessary life needs. She said: “I was able to save some money and started a small business in making perfumes and sell to my neighbors. I also started purchasing some medicines and helping those vulnerable women who cannot go to the hospital.”

She also added: “Fortunately, I was able to purchase some cooking utensils and other living needs for my house. Besides, I have now the sheep which I will raise carefully in order to benefit from them in the near future and live a decent life again.”