SOS Sahel Ethiopia (formerly the SOS Sahel UK programme in Ethiopia) was established in 1989 and is dedicated to improving the living standards of smallholder farmers and marginalised pastoralists through better management of their environment and improved access to fair and sustainable agricultural markets.

In the SNNPR*, Oromia and Amhara regional states, SOS Sahel Ethiopia works with smallholder farmers and marginalised pastoralists to eliminate their chronic food insecurity and ensure environmental sustainability. The environment is crucially important to the livelihood security of farmers and pastoralists, and SOS Sahel Ethiopia's work to date supports its view that improved environmental management can reduce community vulnerability and help the rural poor to climb out of poverty. Poverty is not simply an issue of income; it is also about vulnerability, people's exclusion by the state and society and deprivation of their basic rights. Thus, central to SOS Sahel Ethiopia's development interventions is empowering the poor to exercise their environmental, social, civil, cultural and economic rights.

* Southern Nations, Nationalities & People's Region.

More information about the programmes that SOS Sahel Ethiopia is implementing independently can be found on their website – www.sossahel.org.et/ - and a fact sheet about their work can be accessed here.

In its position as a national NGO in Ethiopia, the organisation has maintained a close relationship with SOS Sahel UK. In 2011 the two organisations worked together to secure funding from DFID (UK government) and the Band Aid Charitable Trust for a new project in SNNPR:

Environmental Rehabilitation in Southern Ethiopia is a three year project (1 April 2012 - 31 March 2015) which aims to reverse the process of ecological degradation and bring measurable improvements in the incomes and food security of individuals and households in 4 key watershed districts of Southern Ethiopia. The project will work directly with 32,000 households in four districts (focussing in particular on women and vulnerable households), and indirectly over 1,000,000 people living within the catchment will benefit from environmental improvements in the area.

SOS Sahel UK will support SOS Sahel Ethiopia to manage this project effectively.

To download a fact sheet about what the project involves please click here.