From a tiny farm on a steep hillside in southern Ethiopia to the bedrooms, kitchens and car radios of the UK. The story of Bekelech and her family, and everything they are doing with Ripple Effect to grow food and earn an income, reached the ears of BBC Radio 4's audience of millions in December 2023.
And they connected. (You can listen to the appeal here.)
Two hundred and sixty-four individual Radio 4 listeners picked up the phone, found the website or put a cheque in an envelope to send in donations ranging from £4 to a thousand pounds.
We’re SO grateful for it all, and especially that £4.
The result, with match funding from an incredibly generous longstanding supporter, is a staggering £47,094 in unrestricted donations.
Funding to challenge the climate crisis
This money will work hard: we’ve got a lot more work to do.
Presenter Toby Buckland told the radio audience how families across east Africa are facing the harsh realities of climate crisis. Like Bekelech, they may see all their crops washed away by unpredictable flooding, or watch them wither in the ground when seasonal rains don’t start.
Families may come to rely upon starchy crops that keep hunger at bay, but don’t provide enough nourishment to support good health and growing children.
Funding to turn lives around
It takes a lot of support to change the mindset of people who feel locked in to hopelessness.
To persuade them that things can change. That they can make rich compost that doesn’t cost anything, from leaves, manure and ash. Grow a rainbow variety of climate-resilient vegetables in improved soil. Produce enough crops to have a surplus to sell, and money to save.
Why unrestricted donations are so valuable
What’s SO exciting about this money we’ve raised via the radio appeal is that we hadn’t planned for it in our budget. When the donations started to flood in that busy week before Christmas, every amount, large and small, felt like a bonus Christmas gift for the families we work with.
And this is unrestricted funding. It’s not tied to the delivery of one particular project (as most grants from major funders are).
While listeners were moved by the story of Bekelech’s individual experience, they understood that money donated wasn’t going directly to HER family or her community – that would be a terrible kind of lottery-for-the-most-articulate.
This is funding that’s available to be allocated to Ripple Effect work where it’s most needed: such as helping to fill the gaps where major donor funding hasn’t covered all of a project’s costs, or the infrastructure that makes it possible for project staff to do their work.
The team effort that makes a radio recording
To get us to recording day, it took seven months of planning, 14 versions of a script, a very professional presenter, and the support of an incredibly dedicated production team in the BBC charity appeals department.
Despite the fact that a new charity’s appeal goes out every week, it felt as though our allocated producer was personally committed to telling OUR story in the most powerful way possible (thankyou Anna Bailey).
And what Bekelech thinks of it all
We can't forget the farmer and mother whose story is at the heart of it all: Bekelech in the Bensa community in Sidama. She was incredibly generous in being prepared to tell us about her early struggles.
When she started working with Ripple Effect in October 2021 the only crops they were growing were coffee and the traditional “hunger crop” enset. “My land was so small as we’d sold part of it when my husband fell sick. I used to feel so disappointed when I couldn’t find enough food for us to eat.”
Alemayehu Abebe is the project coordinator who works with Bekelech. When he told her about the results of the radio appeal she said she was very happy: “My history is the history of others in the community. I am very glad to be a part of the solution to my community’s problems."
To everyone who was moved to support this appeal: thank you!
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