New York (TADIAS) – Today the White House is honoring 14 “Champions of Change” who are leaders in American Diaspora communities with roots in the Horn of Africa.
“These leaders are helping to build stronger neighborhoods in communities across the country, and are working to mobilize networks across borders to address global challenges, the White House said in a statement. “The Champions of Change program was created as a part of President Obama’s Winning the Future initiative. Each week, a different sector is highlighted and groups of Champions, ranging from educators to entrepreneurs to community leaders, are recognized for the work they are doing to serve and strengthen their communities.”
Among those highligeted include Nini Legesse, president of Wegene Ethiopian Foundation (WEF); Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, Founder and Executive Director of Akili Dada — a leadership incubator investing in high-achieving young African women from underprivileged backgrounds; and Nunu Kidane, from Eritrea, founder and Director of Priority Africa Network (PAN) — an organization that provides advocacy for Africans in the Bay Area and beyond.
“These men and women are American leaders we want to celebrate,” said Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough. “We commend the innovative practices, achievements and leadership these change makers bring not only to their communities around this country, but also to the development of and diplomacy with their countries of origin.”
— Watch this event live at 3:00 pm ET January 30th.
New York (Tadias) – After The New York Timespublished a cover story earlier this week featuring a heart-wrenching photograph depicting the worsening food crisis affecting millions of people in the Horn of Africa, the U.S. media may be about to boost its coverage of what’s being described as the “worst famine in a generation.”
According to The New York Times: “The famine in Africa has had to compete with the wrangling over the debt ceiling, the mobile phone hacking scandals in Britain, the killings in Norway and, in Africa itself, the birth of a new country, the Republic of South Sudan.”
“I’m asking myself where is everybody and how loud do I have to yell and from what mountaintop,” Caryl Stern, chief executive of the United States Fund for UNICEF, told NYT. “The overwhelming problem is that the American public is not seeing and feeling the urgency of this crisis.”
When a Rupert Murdoch-owned British newspaper published a cartoon last month showing starving Africans engrossed in the European phone-hacking scandal, it was swiftly and correctly criticized as a tasteless joke. “But the underlying point — that the media has largely ignored what’s happening in Africa — was well taken,” writes Dylan Stableford for The Cutline.
Until recently, ABC claimed that it is the only American news network to have a reporter at the epicenter of Africa’s largest famine in 60 years.
“But that may soon change,” says Stableford.
U.S. administration officials and lawmakers are ringing alarm bells and warning of dire consequences unless global partners urgently step up aid. AFP reports that “even though the famine is expected to worsen and eventually dwarf the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, which claimed nearly a million lives, the public is not stepping up to try to help as it did nearly 30 years ago, when the international community responded to the crisis with fundraisers like Live Aid.”
“It is the most severe humanitarian crisis in a generation, affecting food security for more than 12 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and surrounding areas,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons said as as he opened a hearing on the crisis.
“Based on nutrition and mortality surveys… we estimate that more than 29,000 children under five — nearly four percent of children — have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia,” Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told lawmakers.
Per the U.N.: The humanitarian disaster is likely to expand beyond Somalia in the next few weeks and spread into neighboring Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, David Muir, the American TV journalist in Mogadishu, reported from the city on Monday’s “World News With Diane Sawyer,” describing the situation as the “worst famine in a generation.”
