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Los Angeles, March 2008 — The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) responded quickly to aid victims of the violence that erupted following the December 2007 elections in Kenya. A significant contribution was made to the Friends of the World Food Program (FWFP) to help the UN World Food Programme (WFP) provide food for the hundreds of thousands of Kenyans who were displaced.
Over 300,000 people were forced to flee the violence that claimed 1,000 lives, and they had nowhere to go. Makeshift camps, police stations and churches housed many refugees temporarily, but they sorely lacked food and basic supplies. TPRF’s contribution provided food for 3,000 displaced people for three months.
“The Prem Rawat Foundation’s generous contribution will help save hundreds of lives and prevent under-nutrition and hunger rates from skyrocketing,” said Karen Sendelback, President and CEO of Friends of WFP. “This donation will help WFP reach thousands more crisis victims with the much-needed food relief.”
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Twenty-six-year-old Grace Omaribe, an educated mother of two young boys, described her situation. “There is no food left. It has all been burnt,” she said. “There are no blankets, no pots and pans. I am dressed the way I came—I have nothing else.”
Aid workers from WFP traveled to affected areas quickly, but it was not easy. One WFP Field Officer reported, “Even for our main partner, the Kenya Red Cross, getting into areas where some of the worst violence had taken place had been extremely difficult, but things were getting better by the day, and food was moving. It was a team effort with the lead agency, the Red Cross, providing government-donated maize and with WFP providing the rest.”
He further reported that it was bizarre for him to arrive in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) settlements of Kenyans in Kenya, describing a scene of “thousands sleeping under the stars on cool clear nights; children beginning to suffer from the lack of shelter, coughing and sputtering, noses running; people complaining that they needed food, blankets and protection from those that in many cases continued to threaten them.”
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With so many people at risk of starving, the WFP is working with the government of Kenya, fellow UN Agencies and local NGOs to provide food and other humanitarian assistance as quickly as possible. WFP is supplying beans, vegetable oil, corn-soya blend and ready-to-eat high-energy biscuits, along with trucks for transporting the food, while the government is providing a variety of cereals, and the Kenya Red Cross and other local NGOs are handling distribution.
Because it already has extensive programs in Kenya providing food for 700,000 affected by drought, over 1.1 million school children and over 60,000 HIV/AIDS patients, WFP has been able to respond to this new crisis with extraordinary speed by borrowing from established food stocks over the short term.
Fortunately, the situation is improving after a recent agreement between rivaling factions to form a coalition government. Thousands of displaced people are beginning to return to their farms with the hope of being able to plant crops for the next season and beginning the process of rebuilding their lives.
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(Photos By: WFP / Marcus Prior)
TPRF advances the internationally acclaimed message of peace of Prem Rawat, known also as Maharaji. In addition, it helps provide the necessities of life for people most in need. The Foundation often partners with other humanitarian organizations to bring food, water and disaster relief rapidly where it is most required.
Discover more about Prem Rawat, his message of hope and peace, and the humanitarian activities of The Prem Rawat Foundation
