Madagascar | Be a Seed for Change

CARE -- The Stories of Global Poverty - Crisis in Madagascar -- Donate Now

The people of Madagascar were struggling to recover from Cyclone Giovanna when a second tropical storm,

Irina, took them by surprise last month. With nearly a quarter of the island’s population living in poverty,

these two storms made things worse.

In addition to causing more than 100 deaths, the storms ripped through homes and destroyed the few possessions families owned.
CARE is on the ground today working with our partners to provide emergency relief for 250,000 people

who now lack even the basics: food, clean water and shelter.
Will you make a gift today to help survivors of the storms in Madagascar and people all around the world benefiting from CARE’s lifesaving and life-changing programs?
Among the survivors in Madagascar is Jackie, his wife and 7-year-old daughter.

He told CARE about the night Cyclone Giovanna tore through his district,

“We saw a part of our roof blown away by the storm and our house collapsed after that.”
Nothing near where Jackie lived survived the storm that night

— not homes, stores or crops — but Jackie is thankful he and his family did.

Today, many people in his town are in a dire situation.

People are facing hunger as their food was blown or washed away and they’re living in inadequate,

temporary shelters that do little to protect them from the elements.
Irina’s heavy rains severely damaged roads, making them impassable and

preventing urgent delivery of emergency response services.

Flooding and broken infrastructure also threaten to increase the spread of waterborne diseases like cholera and malaria.
CARE is distributing food and emergency shelter materials as well as repairing roads so that aid reaches those who need it most.

However, much remains to be done before Jackie and his family can resume their normal lives.
Please give now and help CARE bring relief and much-needed hope to poor families and communities around the world.
Your gift to CARE can support disaster survivors like Jackie during their road to recovery,

help us prepare for future emergencies and provide people around the world access to tools,

resources and education they can use to help lift themselves, their families and their communities out of poverty for good.
Please give as much as you possibly can today.
On behalf of the millions of people CARE serves around the world, thank you for your generosity.
Sincerely,
Helene D. Gayle, MD, MPH President and CEO, CARE

Don't delay! Donate by December 31 to help women like Marie experience new beginnings in 2011! -- Make a tax-deductible gift

Marie is a mother of three and a widow living in the Androy region of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. She struggled to support her family for many years with farming, but only earned 75 cents a day — an amount you can imagine wasn’t enough to feed her family.

Marie explains, “In the lean season, we ate only once a day — at night. During the day, we had only mangoes and cactus fruit as substitutes for meals.”

Marie’s options expanded once she began participating in a CARE-supported farmers’ association and exercised her right to 25 acres of her family’s farm. Now, she feeds her children three meals a day. Marie also earns as much as $5 a day at the market by selling the wider variety of crops she learned to grow.

You can help mothers like Marie improve their skills, feed their families and earn their way out of poverty by making a tax-deductible gift today.

Here are some ways your support can make a difference:

$56 can give 7 women like Marie seed packets to start their own garden and increase their family’s income.
$92 can supply 2 women like Dedicaciona in Peru with garden tool kits — including a spade, watering can and more — to cultivate their crops.
$150 can provide a woman like Farida in Bangladesh with a soil testing kit so that she can improve her harvest and help her community.

Please remember, a gift to CARE goes beyond tangible goods. Our comprehensive programs inspire confidence and bring hope to poor girls and women so that they can chart their way out of poverty for good.

Marie says, “I have many goals I want to achieve in the future. I want to improve my family’s lives and save for my children.”

You are one of the keys that can help unlock Marie’s dreams. Please don’t delay making your tax-deductible gift — and help women like Marie, their families and their communities experience powerful new beginnings in 2011.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Helene D. Gayle, MD, MPH
President and CEO, CARE