Menu ENN Search

CAFOD

Name CAFOD Internet http://www.cafod.org.uk
Address Romero Close, Stockwell Rd, London, SW9 9TY Director Julian Filochowski
Telephone

+44 207 733 7900

Overseas staff approx 10
Fax +44 207 274 9630 HQ staff approx 140
Email hqcafod@cafod.org.uk Annual budget £14,287,000

 

Maize distribution: people receive 25 kg, which is supposed to last two weeks. Salala Resettlement Area.

Field Exchange interviewed Maura O'Donahue the health and nutrition advisor for CAFOD's Emergency Support Section (ESS) in the Headquarter offices in London. Maura is a doctor and Medical Missionary of Mary. She started her overseas work in Africa specialising in public and community health. Her involvement with CAFOD began during the 1984 Ethiopian famine when CAFOD supported famine relief work in which she was involved. She then worked in Addis Ababa for the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat between 1984 and 1987. She subsequently set up an HIV/AIDS desk within CAFOD which became the lead agency for this type of work for CARITAS International. After nine years and a short period in New York she moved back into emergency work taking up the health and nutrition advisor post in 2000.

Maura explained how CAFOD was formed in the 1960s when the Catholic Women's League responded to a hurricane in the Caribbean. After this the Bishop's conference for England and Wales created CAFOD as the national CARITAS for the UK and Wales. CAFOD's mandate dictates that it work in both relief and development and works through implementing partners. Although most IPs are church based, CAFOD does occasionally work through noncatholic or non-faith based partners. For example, Islamic Relief have recently been an important partner in Ingushettia. CAFOD receives its funding through voluntary income raised through parishes, schools and religious communities, and through institutional donors like DfID and ECHO.

The emergency support section was only set up in the last 5 years. The section has a Strategic Framework with a set of goals, objectives and indicators for monitoring achievements. There is also an emergency handbook which sets out principles, procedures and guidelines for emergency responses. For example, there is a set of questions that have been designed to determine at what level CAFOD should respond when considering an emergency. If CAFOD is considering a corporate response then the curiously named 'Bubbling Emergency Group' is convened to reach decisions and take forward the response. ESS support to partners can take a variety of forms such as making joint assessments in the initial stages of an emergency, providing specific technical inputs, working together to set standards and develop indicators with which to monitor and review the impact of the work and undertaking capacity building particularly in protracted emergencies.

The ESS are involved in a range of emergency sectors including food and nutrition activities. CAFOD does not purchase or shift food. They supply funds to local partners to purchase food and depend on partners to identify the best type of response in a food emergency. CAFOD supports a range of food and nutrition activities including general rations, supplementary feeding, food for work and cash for work, seeds and tools programmes and agricultural rehabilitation. CAFOD also devotes a lot of resources to providing technical support for their partners who may have steep learning curves to go through. As Maura explained 'in some situations CAFOD have to provide a lot of training'. At the same time Maura was at pains to point out that working through local church-based organisations can have enormous benefits. 'Local church structures have pretty good outreach into a community and can find out what is going on at grass-roots level'. 'People also have a lot of confidence in their local parish, for example, In Tigray CAFOD have been supporting local church organisations in responding to recurrent drought for many years.'More recently local churches have been questioning why things appear not to improve. This has led to activities like reducing soil erosion through terracing, reclaiming gullies and promoting horticulture. Maura believes that without the infrastructure of the church and local trust in it, this type of longer-term activity would not have been possible.

The grass-roots nature of faith-based organisations can also improve access to information for advocacy purposes. Maura gave an example from the Somali region of Ethiopia where it was relatively easy to get information on the fact that the general rations being received were far less than the amounts that humanitarian agencies were claiming.

In support of the idea that church based agencies offer comparative advantages, Maura cited a recent experience in Marsabit, Kenya where UNICEF have been capacity building with local church organisations and increasingly using them as implementing partners in situations of drought. As part justification for the UNICEF programme the Nairobi based representative recently stated that ' when others leave church-based groups will still be there'.

I asked Maura what were the things that she came across in the course of her work that currently worried her the most. She had a number of concerns, for example:

I also asked Maura what were the high and low points that stood out for her in a long and distinguished career. High points for her were when local partners took a longer-term approach to problems, e.g. local partners addressing chronic problems in Tigray. Low points included those all too frequent situations when the general ration failed to reach the 2100 kcal benchmark and people's nutritional status started to deteriorate. Maura also referred again to the IDP camps in Ingushettia where tents that had an eight month shelf-life were still being used after four years and were being patched up by any means available; and sanitation in the camps had reached the appalling state of there being only one toilet per 120 people. Maura finished our interview with the statement that she would like to see more imaginative food and nutrition interventions. I asked for examples. She in turn asked me if I had heard of the Moringa tree. I had to confess that I hadn't, at which point I thought I noticed the slightest of disappointments. Maura went on to explain that the tree, which is indigenous to many parts of central and east Africa, Asia and central and Latin America, has many nutritional benefits. It has more calcium and protein than milk, it has a high percentage of oil, more potassium than bananas and more vitamin A than carrots. It also has certain medicinal properties and although as yet scientifically unproven may have a water purification potential. It's leaves, flowers and pods are all edible and (according to Maura) if powdered leaf is added to porridge malnourished children have shown greater weight gains than with special foods used in selective feeding programmes. Some CAFOD partners have already started growing the trees in nurseries although the potential of this tree is virtually unknown amongst INGOs.

In parting Maura warned me that she was going back into the field in a couple of days and so would not be able to check the draft of this agency profile. With country responsibilities that include, Ethiopia, Tigray, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ingushettia, Chechnya, India and the Philippines, I realised that I was lucky to have grabbed an hour with such a busy person and someone whose unstinting commitment, drive and work-load were a shining example for many of us.

More like this

FEX: Update from Food Security, Livelihoods & HIV/AIDS Working Group

An AIDS orphan collects her food ration A second meeting of the Food Security, Livelihoods & HIV/AIDS Working Group (WG), co-chaired by Rebecca Brown (AAH) and Laura Phelps...

FEX: Rapid response and long-term solutions: Christian Aid and food security in Ethiopia

By Antoinette Powell Antoinette Powell is the Communications and Information Officer, Africa with Christian Aid since 2007. Previously she worked as Advocacy Officer, The...

FEX: Lutheran Development Services

By Marie McGrath, ENN Name Lutheran Development Services (LDS) Formed 1994 Address P. O. Box 388, Mbabane, Swaziland Director Bjorn Brandberg Telephone +268 404-5262...

FEX: Evaluation of use of IFE training materials

By Chloe Angood Chloe has a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree in Development Studies, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS, nutrition and agriculture. Following 3 years as a...

FEX: Canadian Foodgrains Bank

Name: Canadian Foodgrains Bank Annual income (expenditure) (2011/12): $44,259,143 ($39,544,210) Website: www.foodgrainsbank.ca Director(s): Governed by Board of...

FEX: Christian Aid

Name Christian Aid Address 35 Lower Marsh London SE1 7RT, UK Year formed 1945/6 Telephone +44 (0)207 620 4444 Director Dr Daleep Mukarji Fax +44 (0)207 620 0719 HQ...

FEX: Joint Emergency Operation Plan NGO response to emergency food needs in Ethiopia

By Alix Carter Alix Carter has worked in the humanitarian sector in Ethiopia for almost three years. She is currently working as the Humanitarian Accountability Advisor at...

FEX: From the editor

Ethiopia is a diverse country where a significant proportion of the population live on or below the poverty line, where food insecurity is widespread and rates of acute...

FEX: Coordination of a nutrition response in a conflict situation: Learnings from northern Ethiopia

View this article as a pdf Nakai Munikwa is a Nutrition Information Management Specialist for the Nutrition Cluster in Tigray, Ethiopia. Kirathi Mungai is a Nutrition Cluster...

FEX: Emmanuel International

By Andrew Mellen, Emmanuel International Andrew Mellen has been the relief programme manager with EI Malawi since 2003. With a background in agriculture, he previously worked...

FEX: The Centre for Counselling, Nutrition and Health Care (COUNSENUTH)

By Marie McGrath, ENN Name The Centre for Counselling, Nutrition and Health Care (COUNSENUTH) Website www.counsenuth.org (being developed) Address 432 United Nations Road....

FEX: MSF Holland

Name MSF Holland Year formed Staff (2003) 1984 Address Plantage Middenlaan 14 PO Box 10014 1001 EA Amsterdam The Netherlands Overseas 795 Telephone 00 31 20 520...

FEX: Infant Feeding in Emergencies: Experiences from Indonesia and Lebanon

By Ali Maclaine and Mary Corbett Ali Maclaine has a MSc in Human Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has been involved in infant feeding and...

FEX: Artificial feeding in emergencies: experiences from the ongoing Syrian crisis

By Suzanne Mboya Suzanne Mboya is a consultant nutritionist. In 2014 she completed a sixth month mission supporting the Syrian crisis IYCF-E response through a partnership...

FEX: DanChurchAid

Name DanChurchAid Website http://www.danchurchaid.org/ Address Noerregade 13, 1165 Copenhagen Director General Secretary Henrik Stubkjær Phone +45 33 15 28 00 No. of HQ staff...

FEX: Food Aid – On a Wing and a Prayer

By Jeremy Shoham More or less every one in the Singida region of central Tanzania agrees that the community managed emergency food distribution programme implemented over the...

FEX: Infant and young child feeding support in Lebanon: strengthening the national system

By Pressila Darjani and Linda Shaker Berbari Pressila Derjany is the Infant and Young Child Coordinator at IOCC. She has a B.Sc. in Nutrition and Dietetics. She joined IOCC...

FEX: Interview with Rita Bhatia

Personnel profile by Fiona O'Reilly Rita in action - Ethiopia 1989 Most people working in the food and nutrition sector of emergencies have met, or know of, Rita Bhatia. As...

FEX: World Health Organisation

Name Department of Nutrition for Health and Development (NHD), World Health Organisation Year formed 2005 (with Nutrition in Emergencies as a programme area) Address of head...

FEX: Muslim Aid

Name Muslim Aid Director(s) Saif Ahmad CEO Address PO Box 3, London E1 1WP Year formed 1985 Telephone +44(0)20 7377 4200 Main office UK Fax +44(0)20 7377 4201 Overseas...

Close

Reference this page

CAFOD. Field Exchange 16, August 2002. p22. www.ennonline.net/fex/16/agencyprofile

(ENN_3612)

Close

Download to a citation manager

The below files can be imported into your preferred reference management tool, most tools will allow you to manually import the RIS file. Endnote may required a specific filter file to be used.