MAF Youth Magazine - Issue #34

4 MAF Youth FUNdraiser of the year award!

6 Win a £30 high street voucher

36 hour road trip or a 1-hour flight?

10 Rocky roads and chilli challenges – Liberia

Support Uganda’s hungry refugees!

Global issues around the world, like the war in Ukraine, droughts across Africa and the Turkey-Syria earthquake have a big impact on how human aid (emergency food rations, clean water, shelter) is allocated

With less funding to go around, the UN’s World Food Programme have announced further cuts which could seriously affect the health and wellbeing of more than 1.5 million refugees in Uganda (source: Uganda OPM).

Last year’s cuts saw Uganda’s refugees receive only 26%-48% of their daily food rations, and this could be drastically reduced by September 2023 if funding isn’t found.

EVERY YEAR, 3.1 MILLION CHILDREN DIE OF MALNUTRITION AROUND THE WORLD.

The human body needs energy and nutrients to function, most of which are gained through eating a healthy, balanced diet.

If you can’t access enough food, your body begins to break down body fat and muscle, your metabolism starts to slow down, and your immune system is significantly weakened.

• Around 45% of deaths among children under 5 are linked to undernutrition.

• Women, infants, children and teenagers are most at risk of malnutrition.

• Malnutrition can cause ‘stunting’, meaning you don’t reach your full height, physical or cognitive potential — causing lots of health problems throughout your life.

With turmoil occurring in neighbouring countries such as South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Somalia, more than 46,000 new refugees have arrived in Uganda since the start of 2023 (source: UNHCR).

A boy makes bricks in Uganda’s Nyumanzi Refugee Camp

The shocking state of the roads en route to the refugee settlements

South Sudanese refugees wait for treatment at the Palorinya Settlement

Dave Forney, Mark & Kelly Hewes

Uganda’s refugee community is growing, but resources are shrinking. What can MAF do?

MAF Uganda Country Director Ruth Jack gives her insight into the crisis:

‘Hundreds of thousands of lives are in danger. Food shortages are already underway, and we are seeing hunger-related problems such as stunted growth in children. Perhaps the world will notice when children are facing starvation across Uganda’s refugee communities.

‘There is a disaster unfolding and MAF is very busy doing all it can to help vulnerable and isolated communities.’

Since 1987, MAF and its partners have been delivering help, hope and healing to most of Uganda’s refugee camps. There are now 13 camps across the country.

MAF works with a range of partners including Tearfund, World Vision, Save the Children, the Red Cross and the International Rescue Committee which work tirelessly to improve health, sanitation, education, food security and mental health in the camps.

MAF’s eastern and western air shuttle services both go to the northern camps three times a week. The most northerly refugee camp, Adjumani, only takes 90 minutes from Kajjansi, saving humanitarian workers 10 hours of dangerous and exhausting road travel.

As the number of refugees increase throughout Uganda, so the demand for MAF’s services grows.

So, in September, MAF will be launching a new twice-weekly shuttle service to southwestern Uganda — home to four growing refugee camps. This will enable MAF partners to reach Uganda’s remotest refugees by air, saving them an arduous ten-hour journey.

How can you make a global impact today?

We cannot do this without your generous support! Please help MAF reach even more hungry refugees.

Share

Pray!

We may not always think we can do something practical to help, but the power of prayer transforms lives! (See page 13 for how to pray for refugees.)

FUNdraise!

as a youth group so we can fund more shuttle flights like those in Uganda, so isolated people don’t get left behind

Raise awareness of the situation in Ugandan refugee camps — Share MAF posts with your friends!

Snap us with your email address and we’ll send more info on how to help

Volunteer

with MAF Youth to raise awareness of the desperate situation of Uganda’s refugees, along with the problems faced by many others living in isolation around the world.

How MAF supporters keep us in the sky

MAF needs to raise millions of pounds each year to be able to keep our planes in the air. (Aviation is an expensive business!)

Because of the incredible generosity of supporters across the UK, we’re able to provide subsidised flights to thousands of people living in isolation. But how do we at MAF raise money to keep our planes flying?

FUNdraise

Our supporters organise a variety of amazing events to raise money — from youth club auctions, car washes and cake sales to sponsored runs, flying competitions and silent discos. These fun ideas generate vital funds that make an enormous impact worldwide.

Regular givers

We have thousands of wonderful supporters who love what MAF does and give money each month to ensure that we can continue to help remote and isolated people.

Legacies

Some people leave a generous gift to MAF in their Wills. (A Will is a document that explains where you would like to leave all your money and possessions when you die.)

Special appeals

Each year we focus on a particular area that shows how MAF responds to a crisis.

Examples of past special appeals

Disaster relief

These appeals show that, whenever disasters such as war, earthquake, famine or pandemic break out, MAF’s specially trained disaster response team assembles swiftly to see how MAF can best deliver relief, aid, shelter, medicine and clean water to those most in need.

Refugee crisis

This appeal used a video that we filmed while visiting refugee camps in Uganda that hosted more than a million refugees. (Many had escaped war-torn South Sudan.) Focusing on food, we showed an MAF partner helping refugees to grow crops in the camps, despite poor soil.

Help us buy a plane!

This appeal raised £1.6 million to provide MAF with a new plane for its South Sudan programme. The aircraft has been used to transform lives for five years now!

These special appeals focus on the life-saving impact that MAF can make when disaster strikes, asking for donations so we can act quickly to prevent more lives and livelihoods being destroyed.

MAF sends out these special appeals to highlight the situation, and show how our planes and personnel are bringing help, hope and healing to those most affected.

We know that MAF’s special appeals raise around 1 million pounds every year, enabling us to make thousands of flights to people in desperate need.

FUN draiser

tap into your talents!

We want you to help us with our next appeal

Are you aged between 13-18 with a talent for communicating stories? Whether that’s through:

Writing

Vidoes

Singing Animation Podcasts

SKIES THE LIMIT!

We want you to use one of our life-saving MAF stories, and rewrite it in your own style of storytelling, explaining why you’re so passionate about people giving money to help keep our planes in the air.

The winner will be given the chance to join our fundraising team to help them shape a special appeal for 2024 which will go out to all our supporters. You will also win an Indoor skydiving experience for 2!

If you need help, we’re happy to answer any questions you might have along the way.

What do I NEED to enter

1. Email youth@maf-uk.org to register your interest.

2. Look out for your special fundraising pack. (We’ll send you a pack that includes an MAF story you can use, photos/footage, and an info sheet explaining what to include to aid impact and to help you write/showcase a great fundraising appeal.)

3. Using YOUR talent, tell the MAF story from YOUR perspective! Explain the difference you think MAF makes, while showing its global impact. (We’re looking for 200-300 words maximum or a 30-second video.)

All entries should reach us by 31 October 2023.

Remember, if you want to pursue fundraising, journalism or any kind of writing as a career, this experience will look great on your CV!

The winner will be picked at random on Friday 6 October 2023, so please send your answers by 9am that day.

country LIBERIA capital

MONROVIA known for

• One of the world’s youngest populations

• Years of civil war

• Hot tropical climate.

LuAnne Cadd

Lorry-sized potholes, salty soil and life-transforming flights

Avionics Manager Dave Waterman and his wife Becky joined MAF Uganda in 2017.

In 2021, however, they made the big decision to move to MAF’s base in Liberia, where Dave is in charge of fixing our planes.

Having dreamed about working with MAF, he now oversees the maintenance of MAF’s entire African fleet of planes!

We caught up with Dave and Becky recently when they visited the UK.

How did you end up working for MAF?

I was 13 when I first read an MAF magazine and it was just one of those moments where the words jumped off the page and I realised, ‘That’s what I’m supposed to do!’

I rang MAF and asked, ‘What do I need to do to work for you?’ The advice MAF gave me shaped the course of my education and early career.

Why did you move to Liberia?

FACT FILE

Picking up the phone and ringing someone to find out information was done before googling, WhatsApp, or Snapchat were available. (Can you imagine life without them?)

It was really a God thing. I visited there twice in 2019, and both times I felt God saying that He wanted us involved in the programme there, but we had no idea what that would look like.

We started a conversation with MAF, aware that we could be more flexible in terms of location because we didn’t have children or schooling to worry about.

We are facing an aircraft maintenance engineer shortage around the world. We don’t have enough engineers to put in the hours necessary so all our planes can fly, which made us think about how we could achieve more with less.

Paula Alderblad LuAnne Cadd, Katie Machell, Annamarie van der Meijden, David Waterman and Partners In Health

They were already building a huge hangar in Liberia, where we could fit up to nine planes from across West Africa. We need five engineers to fix nine planes, but currently have only two — myself and a pilot/mechanic — but he spends most of his time flying due to the demand in Liberia.

The saying goes that ‘A plane can only take off when the weight of the paperwork is the same as the weight of the plane!’ Our passengers have no idea of the amount of background work and time that goes into each flight.

Here are just some of the roles needed to get a plane in the air:

Aircraft maintenance engineer — completes regular maintenance, inspections and repairs of aircraft and equipment

Stores manager — orders plane parts and organises equipment

Operations manager — handles paperwork and the records of all flight logs, cargo and passenger weights, to ensure safe and efficient use of MAF’s aircraft and crew

Building and vehicle maintenance manager — assists with additional vehicles, hangar and office buildings, and the training and upskilling of national team members.

What’s different about life in Liberia?

Our programme in Liberia is one of the highest impact programmes MAF operates. Every single flight is either life-saving or life-changing!

MAF transports people and cargo to inaccessible or hard to reach areas to meet desperate levels of need across Liberia. We fly missionaries, charity workers, doctors, printing presses, educational materials, X-ray machines, food, and the basic items we take for granted in the UK, but which are life-changing here.

Every flight changes a life. And because every flight is fully booked, there’s a waiting list of people and cargo for each one. Even if we had more staff, we’d still have a backlog of additional flights needed.

There is very little aviation across Liberia, despite the horrific roads and lack of transportation.

It is a really challenging country, but it’s also beautiful. We are literally 30-seconds from the beach, so we walk there most evenings.

It really helps our mental health as it’s a safe, free place to unwind. Life can get a bit full-on here at times, and the climate can be quite energy sapping. It’s 80-90% humidity all year round, and between 25-35°, so it can leave you exhausted daily.

But if you’re looking for meaningful work that makes a big difference — it’s here!

FACT FILE

Liberia’s road and highways network = 10,600km (6,586 miles). Only 6% of the roads are paved. The rainy season often causes about 94% of the road network to become impassable.

The UK’s network of paved roads and highways = 422,100km (262,280 miles).

The challenges of unpaid roads in liberia

The food is ridiculously spicy! The spice levels start at ghost chilli pepper level and go swiftly upwards! Because food can be so plain, people add chillies to give it more flavour.

Due to the climate, there’s very little farming in Liberia. It’s really hard to grow anything due the humidity and because the soil is so salty.

Civil wars, Ebola and COVID-19 have caused the loss of many of the people and skills needed for farming and, as people flocked to the cities, agriculture just stopped completely.

The few things that can be grown can’t be transported to sell in the cities because the roads are in such a bad condition.

What basic food there is includes rice (which can be very gritty!), potato greens (but only the top bit of the plant because the actual potato is too expensive to buy) and bush meat — meaning rats sold on the side of the road — chicken feet, or fish that you have to catch yourself.

Most of the food is imported, and is very expensive because it’s flown in. We mostly live on canned and frozen fruits and vegetables. So biting into a fresh blueberry the other day while we were back in the UK was bliss. It actually burst in my mouth!

People in the UK complain about supermarket food prices going up, but a fresh coffee in Liberia would cost me 9 dollars! At least while we’re back in England, everything feels cheaper, fresher and much more accessible.

In Uganda, it was so much easier to buy fresh fruit at the side of the road, purchase cheap food at market stalls and do a more normal weekly shop. But it’s much more of a challenge to buy basic food in Liberia, because of the huge cost of importing it.

There are NGOs working to help support the rebuilding of farming across Liberia, but it’s a long-term goal which will take time. Fortunately, MAF helps them by delivering farming equipment, seeds, food and animals for local families and farmers.

What issues do teenagers in Liberia face?

There are practically no jobs. Families scrape together everything to try and get a child through school. They invest all their money in doing so, but there are no real job opportunities at the end.

They might occasionally find something, but often won’t be paid regularly. But because they’re terrified of losing their job to someone else, they can go for six months without being paid.

There’s no career path — people are just surviving. The most common phrase you hear here when you ask, ‘How was your day?’ is, ‘Thank God I survived — I had food to eat, and somewhere to sleep. It’s been a good day.’

There is little hope among young people, because there’s nothing for them to hope for.

The new MAF hangar in Liberia

PRAY FOR

Safe routes for refugees escaping conflict in their home countries. Ask God for His protection and guidance.

The provision of food, clean water and shelter. Ask God for His blessing on the organisations we fly as they provide access to the basic necessities needed for survival.

New opportunities as the refugees seek safety in a new country. May God open doors to new communities, and provide friendship, healing and work so the refugees can provide for their families.

Any prayer needs? Snap us your requests — we'd love to pray for you !

WELCOME!

Say hello to our new MAF Youth panel members — Gracie, Tammy, Jude, Amy, and Bea

Don't forget to add us on snapchat to stay up to date with all MAF Youth is doing!

CONGRATULATIONS

Asani Andrews for winning our last competition!