Help those in poverty who are hardest hit by the climate crisis
Climate change is wreaking havoc on communities around the world, but it’s the people living in the most marginalised areas of our planet that are most often hit the hardest. The effects of climate chaos mean that the world’s poorest people are being pushed further into poverty – and the situation is desperate.
Rising temperature are bringing drought to areas where many families desperately rely on farming to feed their children and earn a basic income. Flooding and extreme weather conditions are wiping away the homes of already impoverished families as poorer countries battle to provide strong infrastructure in these areas to weather the storms.
And when climate crises’ strike, communities where services are already stretched thin have little resources available to provide for people’s most basic needs, making many homeless and vulnerable to risks like diseases and escalating violence.
ActionAid is already on the ground in these areas, working with women, children and their communities to alleviate the hardships which climate change brings to the world’s poorest people.
But we need you help to make sure we can continue to stand with women and children in the fight for equality in the face of climate injustice. A gift from you today will make sure that when the next disaster strikes, we are there for those who need support the most.
Will you stand with women and girls living in poverty in the face of climate chaos and give a monthly gift today?
Asiya’s story
Trigger warning: This story deals with the death of young children
In February this year Asiya, a 28 year old mum of six children, woke to the find her home and community in Malawi battered by the rains and winds of Cyclone Freddy, the longest-lasting cyclone on record. Rivers started to form where none had been before and as Asiya ran to wake up her neighbours and gather her belongings from her thatched house, it soon became apparent that this was not a race to save her possessions, but a race to save her and her family’s lives.
In the onslaught of the Cyclone, Asiya made the best decision she could for her children at the time, taking her four youngest children to her grandmother’s house in the belief that they would be safer there in an iron roofed house. But the rains continued to come and eventually breached the door of the home. Not long after, the house collapsed entirely. In a tragedy that no mother should face, all four of her young children were swept away with the floods.
Asiya has suffered one of the worst consequences of climate injustice a person can face. She says: “Hasn’t it taken enough lives already? Does it want to kill us all?”
There is nothing that can take the pain Asiya has to live through away, but ActionAid is determined to ensure that governments champion climate solutions. That’s why our teams work tirelessly not only providing temporary shelter and basic sanitation and food for survivors of emergencies like the one Asiya has faced, but also lobbying those in power to stop investing in climate harming industries and divert money to communities like Asiya’s to be ready for when the next climate disaster strikes.
Please support our work and change the lives of women and children today.
ActionAid’s work for climate justice
The two biggest causes of climate change are fossil fuel and industrial agriculture. ActionAid’s new Fund Our Future campaign is focused on diverting financing away climate harming industries and towards solutions such as renewable energy and agroecology, which is farming that works with nature.
