The humanitarian aid initiative called “One Diaspora to One Tigrayan Family” witnessed impactful

02/25/2022

The humanitarian aid initiative called “One Diaspora to One Tirayan Family” the head office of TDA together with TDA North America had executed was witnessed positively impactful in terms of easing the economic problem facing our people.

The project, as everybody knows, was initiated taking into consideration the humanitarian catastrophes unfolding in Tigrai. Not only the beneficiaries, but even the general public have appreciated the remarkable job TDA did in this regard.

The humanitarian aid initiative, unlike the name given to it, was not just limited to the diaspora’s immediate family; rather it was so inclusive of other individuals and or households, who were in urgent need of assistance.

The fact of the matter is that the project had achieved a multiplier effect in a sense that even the people who didn’t have relatives in the diaspora or who didn’t directly receive donation from them benefited as well. Because, when one got support, s/he shared some to her/his neighbors or friends. Besides, there were also a number of generous diaspora who had assisted other people out of their familial circle.  In this way, the economic benefit of the project was believed to be so high that it had trickled to every member of the society one way or another. 

On the basis of the information we gathered from the beneficiaries via formal and informal interview, a considerable number of beneficiaries were so much delightful that they apparently had saved their loved ones who were at risk. They said: “Had TDA not launched the project, we could have lost our child, parent, grandparent, mother, and father”. And others said to their amazement, “It is because of TDA we are here waiting to take out money. We are thankful that TDA helped us out!”

People used the donation they received for various purposes depending on their needs. While some got medications with the money they received for their seriously sick family members, others fulfilled their families’ physiological needs by buying food items.

In fact, none of the beneficiaries, despite TDA’s attempts to film them, were willing to give interview in public. They didn’t want to get exposed for concrete reasons. Fair enough. They even chose to remain anonymous.

Many a person witnessed that the project was effective describing it a life-saving initiative. This indicates that it actually had a very humanitarian element that came in at critical time when millions were desperate. Needless to say, they had all enjoyed the initiative, disregarding the alleged hiccups that occurred in the process, e.g., delay.

For Tegaru it is not that difficult to understand the situation the TDA is operating in. It is terrible. There had been multiple challenges that awfully affected its operation essentially resulting from the ongoing complete siege, communication blackouts, lack of access to our backers, and of course financial/cash constraints which specially was the root cause for the delay and suspension of the operation.

All in all, it still is worth knowing that over 168 million birr, sent by over 4 thousand diaspora, had thus far been spread across the society. This in fact was a huge amount of money that TDA managed to mobilize dealing with all those challenges, wasn’t it?

Recently, TDA shared over 1.5 million birr among the most affected beneficiaries on the basis of the donor’s interest such as workers of Almeda Textile Factory (132,000 ETB), malnourished children being attended at Ayder Referral Hospital (132,000 ETB), Disabled Veteran Fighters Association (720,000 ETB), Fremnatos Elders, Mentally Disabled and Children Charity Organization (58,000 ETB), residents of Embaseneyti Woreda (480,000 ETB), and internally displaced persons living in Meserete Primary School Camp (72,000 ETB).

Finally, we can say that the one diaspora to one Tigrayan family humanitarian aid initiative was a success in terms of having achieved its objective as it was able to reach out hundreds of thousands of our people in need.