"My children went to school because of the project!"

Habte Arage, aged 52 years, lives in Yeneja Misgua kebele, Meket Woreda, North Wollo zone of Amhara region. He is married has seven children (F: 4). The family has only 0.75 hectare of agricultural land.

The conflict has affected the family of Habte and it brought the loss of the house covered with corrugated iron sheet, 500 eucalyptus trees, four quintals of wheat and two quintals of lentils. The total due to the conflict was estimated about ETB 88,000.

Fortunately, Livelihoods for resilience Activity Project has come with new modalities that targeted the households who were highly affected by the conflict. Hence, Habte Arage has become a beneficiary of the livelihoods recovery and received an amount of ETB 15,000 from the project.

Therefore, Habte has bought four sheep for fattening with the cost of ETB 11,200, 10 egg laying chickens with the cost of ETB 1000 and poultry feed that costed of ETB 2,000 using the recovery grant. He used locally available feed for fattening of the sheep and sold them with the total cost of ETB 18,000 at the time of Ethiopian New Year. Habte have got net profit of ETB 6,800 from sheep fattening activity. Again, he has continued fattening and bought four sheep with the cost of ETB 18,000 that will be sold when Ethiopian Christmas comes. The chickens are growing and it is too early to collect eggs. When they start laying, the family gains additional income that helps their livelihood to enhance. The couples said “if we were not targeted for the conflict recovery program, our three children could not have gone to school.” He added “I don’t put in plain words the rescue and contribution of the project to us during such trouble and stressful time”. Habte and the family are grateful for the generous support of L4R project.