Senegal is a West African nation on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. To give an idea of its size, Senegal is slightly smaller than South Dakota in terms of square miles. The population is about 14 million people. Like other African nations, Senegal is considered a developing nation. This means that the country experiences problems that other more developed nations do not face, like a lack of resources such as food and clean water. Food is especially a problem in underdeveloped countries, and Senegal is no exception. If you want to know how to help people in Senegal, nutrition and food security are excellent places to start, and can ultimately save lives.

Good indicators of a nation’s issues with sufficient food are obesity as well as underweight statistics, especially for underweight children. According to the CIA World Factbook, Senegal has an obesity rate of 8.3 percent as of 2014. Among other nations, this ranks them close to the bottom, at 145 out of 191 nations. The percentage of children below age 5 that are underweight is 12.8 percent, putting them close to the top of nations with underweight children (based on percentage).

One organization dedicated to fighting hunger in Senegal is Caritas Internationalis. Caritas is a group that was created to reach out to the poor of the world, regardless of race or religion, and to assist those in need when a disaster strikes. Caritas, inspired by the Catholic church, seeks to take on extreme poverty through the grassroots method, putting people on the ground in impoverished communities in order to lend a direct helping hand.

For Senegal itself, Caritas is “launching an emergency project” to help families that are in urgent need of care. Due to bad harvests, natural disasters and a dramatic rise in food prices, poor families have experienced the harshness of poverty even more severely, which means even less food. One out of five households in Senegal are going hungry.

Caritas seeks to help the Senegalese by providing food, such as rice, millet and oil, to over 1,000 families for at least three months. Their goal is to have these families eating three meals a day. There are also cereal banks throughout Senegal, providing 600 families with regular access to food. There are many other projects as well, including projects to ensure that farmers have proper amounts of seeds and tools.

For the person looking for how to help people in Senegal, helping Caritas might be a great way to assist those in need. One way to help this organization is by donating. Caritas has a very old-fashioned sort of charm, and also operates using older methods (being an organization that has existed for over a hundred years); this means that donating to them is not done directly through the computer. To give to Caritas, a check can be mailed to their headquarters, or you can make a direct transfer through a bank account.

If you are looking to go a little further in helping, Caritas also take volunteers from all over the world, especially those willing to help when disaster strikes. Discover where they work and contact them in regards to volunteering.

Of course, another great way to help can be found on the Borgen Project website, and is perhaps one of the simplest ways of all to help the impoverished. Calling Congress can get bills passed that allocate large amounts of funding to helping the poor and hungry of the world looked at by leaders.

Every call made about an issue gets tallied up by the interns who answer the phone and shown to the representative or senator. All that needs to be said is, “Hello, I’m a Borgen Project supporter and I support protecting the International Affairs Budget,” or whatever bill you choose to support (a list can be found in the link). And that’s the whole phone call. It can be done in an easy 30-second call, and becomes even more effective when one gets their family and friends to do it as well.

– Stephen Praytor

Photo: Flickr