REPORTS
Supporting 2.2 million people in a year of extraordinary climate extremes
Zamzam Foundation supported over 2.2 million people across Somalia in 2023, according to our latest Annual Report.
In a year of climate extremes in which the worst floods for decades followed the worst drought in living memory, our teams were on hand to provide life-saving emergency aid to 111,000 people and to support nearly a million people through seasonal food distributions. We also invested significantly in health, clean water, sustainable livelihoods, education, and peacebuilding (see map).
“This report affirms the positive impact of programmes implemented by Zamzam Foundation to support Somalia’s poorest people,” write Suhaib Adullatif and Omar Jama – Zamzam’s Chair and Executive Director – in their foreword to the report.
“Our aim is to support and empower the most vulnerable – including pregnant and breastfeeding women, malnourished and orphaned children, the elderly, and people with disabilities – and to inspire and equip the next generation through education and training. We would like to thank our board of trustees and our staff and volunteers for their hard work in the face of so many challenges this year. Their energy and effort have been outstanding.”
Zamzam’s annual report is full of information about the challenging context in which we operate and our wide-ranging work. The 36-page report includes:
- An overview of our vision, mission, and core values
- Key statistics on our income and expenditure, the aid we have delivered, and our impact on the lives and livelihoods of the poorest families across Somalia
- Eight sections detailing our approach and delivery in eight distinct but complementary programme areas, from emergency relief and health care to education and peacebuilding
- A special feature on our work to empower women and girls, who are described as “resourceful, resilient and a bedrock of our society” in the Somalia Women’s Charter
- Over 50 photographs and eight individual success stories that bring our work to life
- A list of the 45 local, national, and international donors and partners who support our work.
Somalia is not only one of the very poorest nations but also heads the rankings for vulnerability to conflict (Fragile States Index) and to climate change (Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative index – ND-GAIN). It was a huge relief, our report says, to see the end of the worst drought on record with the onset of the Gu rains from March onwards. There was a stark reminder, however, of a different aspect of climate vulnerability later in the year when heavy Deyr rains resulted in the worst floods for a generation, affecting 2.5 million people.
The life-saving and life-changing aid delivered by Zamzam’s hard-working teams on the ground across Somalia, captured in the report, included:
- $8.2 million worth of emergency aid, healthcare, and livelihoods programmes benefiting over 430,000 people
- Our health facilities and mobile clinics provided services to over 228,000 people. We treated 6,923 women and children for acute malnutrition, while nearly 45,000 people received vaccinations against deadly diseases, maternity care, treatment for tuberculosis, or sight-saving cataract surgery
- 154 new wells plus 15 new and 10 rehabilitated boreholes, providing 692,000 people with clean water
- $2.8 million worth of education and orphans programmes to build a brighter future for some of Somalia’s poorest children. We enrolled 532 new children into our orphans programme, which currently provides support to the families of 11,500 orphans
- Support for over 26,000 farmers and small family businesses through a combination of grants, loans, livestock, seeds, tools, and the loan of machinery to prepare land for cultivation
- Peacebuilding initiatives to resolve two inter-clan and intra-clan conflicts over scarce resources such as water and pasture in three regions, enabling 30,000 people to live together more harmoniously.
The annual report records that our generous donors contributed $16.4 million to Zamzam in 2022. Nearly half these funds (46%) came from our three biggest institutional donors: Alnajat Charity (10.8%), the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (14%), and the Humanitarian Relief Foundation – IHH (14%).
Our increasingly prominent role on the international stage included attending the UN’s summit on the Sustainable Development Goals and the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP) climate conference. In a landmark year for our international outreach and advocacy we became the first Somali charitable organisation to join the influential International Council of Voluntary Organisations (ICVA) and secured special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) – the UN’s central forum for discussing international economic and social issues.
We spent nearly $14.5 million on directly supporting people in need — 85.5 per cent of the total, up 13 per cent on the previous year. The other 14.5 per cent was spent on project support and administrative costs to keep all our programs running in an integrated, efficient and effective way.
