Most urgent needs
This list comes from our partners, not from our communications team. It is what they have told us is most pressing right now.
No funding targets or shortfall figures are shown
We have not published a monetary target, a percentage funded or a countdown for any of these needs, because inventing those figures would be dishonest — and because artificial urgency is a fundraising tactic we have decided against.
Each need is described with a qualitative urgency instead. Real costed appeals will replace these once the organisation supplies verified figures.
Current priorities
Several community water points are out of service and need parts and skilled repair before the dry months begin.
Each repair is modest in cost and returns a working water source to a whole community. Committees are already formed and contributing to maintenance funds; what is missing is the parts and the technician's time.
Food & Clean WaterChildren at risk of dropping out because a household cannot cover fees, uniform or materials for the next term.
Support is arranged discreetly through head teachers so that no child is identified in front of classmates. Priority goes to children in caregiver-headed households and to girls at the transition to secondary school.
EducationRebuilding community seed reserves depleted during consecutive poor seasons, and expanding sealed storage.
Storage that prevents post-harvest loss is one of the cheapest resilience measures available. Rebuilt reserves mean households can plant without selling assets first.
Food & Clean WaterExisting clinics that cannot open after dark or store refrigerated medicines because they have no reliable power.
A solar installation with battery storage transforms what an existing facility can do — night-time care, cold chain for vaccines, and phone contact with the district hospital.
Health & WellbeingGrandmothers and older siblings raising children who have lost parents, at risk of family separation.
Household economic support, school costs and caregiver groups keep children safely with family, which is both far better for the child and considerably less costly than institutional care.
Family SupportRequests from partner communities for trained mediators to work on land, inheritance and water disputes.
Mediators are selected by their own communities and trained over several months. This work rarely attracts funding because it produces no visible infrastructure, and it is among the most durable things we do.
Reconciliation & PeacebuildingEvery item comes from a partner organisation telling us what they most need, usually in a quarterly review conversation. We then check it against what we know of the context and what other agencies are doing nearby.
What we deliberately do not do is select for fundability. Trained mediators and water-point spare parts are consistently among the most valuable things we can fund and among the hardest to raise money for, because neither produces a compelling photograph.
Countdown timers, artificial deadlines and “only hours left” framing work, which is precisely why they are so common. They also treat the people reading them as targets rather than partners, and they treat the people in the photographs as leverage.
Some of these needs genuinely are time-sensitive — a water point repaired before the dry season, seed reserved before the planting window. We will say so when it is true. We will not invent it when it is not.
A gift to “where it is needed most” can move to whichever of these needs is most pressing at the moment the money arrives. Designated giving is entirely welcome and always honoured — but undesignated funds are the ones that let us respond when a situation changes in a fortnight.
An undesignated gift lets our partners direct funds to whichever of these needs is most pressing when the money arrives.