Catholic nuns team up with Mary’s Meals to feed children as hunger crisis unfolds in Ethiopia

Tigray is home to over 7 million people, and more than 4.5 million people there are now in need of aid. According to MacFarlane-Barrow, over a million are displaced and living in camps, 75% of lactating mothers are malnourished, and more than half of the children are out of school, with many more continuing to drop out because of hunger.

Pandemic closures and war

In 2020, when schools closed initially due to the pandemic, Mary’s Meals helped the Daughters of Charity to provide take-home rations to families with children who had previously been receiving meals at school. 

As schools prepared to reopen later that year, the civil war broke out, and millions of people across Tigray fled to seek safety. Across Mekelle, schools became temporary shelters for internally displaced people (IDPs). Despite communications blackouts, limited access to food and cash, and ongoing violence, Mary’s Meals continued to assist the Daughters of Charity so they could provide meals and other essential support to more than 30,000 people during the conflict. 

After the cease-fire, as some people returned to their villages, the Daughters of Charity, supported by Mary’s Meals, continued to deliver food aid. As soon as schools were able to reopen in 2023, the sisters restarted their in-school feeding as quickly as possible, concentrating on areas of great need in Eastern Tigray. The school feeding program was fully reinstated at the end of 2023.

However, in some parts of the region, schools have remained closed, and people have been unable to return to their villages. Regional statistics suggest that more than half of all primary-age children in Tigray (53%) are not currently enrolled in school, with the situation made worse by serious staff shortages and damage to school buildings sustained during the war. Approximately 15,000 teachers are still unaccounted for, and 95% of classrooms in the Central Zone of Tigray, an area where much of Mary’s Meals school feeding takes place, are damaged because of the war.

An appeal to help brothers and sisters in need 

“It’s hard to exaggerate how many different things are making life so difficult here,” MacFarlane-Barrow said in a video made during his visit to Tigray last month. “[This] famine could become one like the early ’80s when a million people died. Surely at this stage in the history of mankind, that can’t happen again in this world of plenty. We need to act. We need to grow our school feeding program; everyone is asking if they have a future … let’s keep going with all our strength, urgently.”

Mary’s Meals is currently holding an appeal to raise funds to be able to expand its program to reach thousands more children with meals.

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In a recent video, Sister Medhin discussed the sisters’ challenges in Tigray, exhorting everyone to act.

“Our voices, our suffering, our pain, should be heard. And accordingly, we expect a concrete response by the people who have power in their hands, and by those who can share maybe from the little they have, and from the access they have,” she said.

“I really want them to do something very, very soon because we don’t want more people to die,” she continued. “We are talking about people dying of hunger in the 21st century. That should put many in shame. It is shameful when you know your brother and your sister in any part of the world [are hungry]. I just want [people] to do what is within their hands… All you need is a heart that is loving and a mind that can decide to do it.”