Catholic Relief Services Ethiopia's largest partner is the Ethiopian Catholic Church Social and Development Coordinating Offices of Harar, Meki, Adigrat, Sodo and Hosanna. CRS Ethiopia has partnered with these institutions in large-scale emergency relief and development programs since the mid-1980s. Three offices—Harar in the east, Meki in the central Rift Valley and Adigrat in the north—are partners across several projects in CRS Ethiopia: food security, emergency response, safety net, water and sanitation, health and nutrition, and agriculture and natural resources management integrated watershed management programs. These programs incorporate agro-enterprise and natural resources management, water and sanitation, health, livelihoods recovery, and HIV and AIDS prevention and care projects.

On behalf of the American people, United States Agency for International Development-Food for Peace (USAID-FFP) responds to development opportunities in Africa to improve access to and delivery of life-saving health work, to support more accountable and democratic institutions, to start businesses and foster an environment attractive to private investment, to stave off conflict and strengthen communities.

In Ethiopia, USAID-FFP and Catholic Relief Services have been partners for more than four decades. The focus has been on improving food security of rural farmers and the health and nutritional status of mothers and children. This is accomplished through agricultural investments, direct food aid and effective behavior change.

Catholic Relief Services Ethiopia supports various organizations that ensure marginalized groups like malnourished street children, terminally ill AIDS patients and other vulnerable groups are treated with dignity and compassion. The largest of these programs is run by the Missionaries of Charity. Missionaries of Charity is an international religious congregation in the Catholic Church, founded by Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India, in 1950. The order serves the world's poorest people without regard to race, color, language, religion or nationality.

Missionaries of Charity is widely regarded by governments—including those of the United States and Ethiopia—as being one of the most effective and efficient institutions in the world in targeting and distributing food aid to the most vulnerable parts of society.

Catholic Relief Services and our partners improve agricultural productivity through promotion of new agricultural technologies, provision of seeds and improving farmers' skills and access to inputs. CRS provides seeds of improved varieties of crops such as white pea bean, maize, wheat, potato, chickpea and others. In our efforts to help households diversify their off-farm income, thereby increasing their resiliency, CRS and our partners also distribute improved beehives, poultry breeds and small ruminants.

Climate change efforts also focus on the development of tree seedling nurseries and creation of environmental entrepreneurship that promotes production and use of fuel saving stoves, thereby reducing reliance on greater amounts of charcoal.

Catholic Relief Services and our partners implement projects that build resilience, such as seed fairs for emergency distribution, water point rehabilitation, nutrition response, community-based disaster risk management planning to improve soil conservation and natural resource management to help communities better withstand shocks such as drought or flooding. In addition to these sector-specific emergency responses, CRS carries out food distribution in emergencies.

CRS' Development Food Aid Program is designed to help chronically food insecure and vulnerable men, women and children so that they can better withstand modest shocks and promote sustainable community development work while increasing their health and nutrition status.

Catholic Relief Services' Water and Sanitation (WASH) approach provides hardware to construct institutional latrines and promotes appropriate hygiene and sanitation behaviors, such as the use of improved latrines, that can be easily adopted.

Through our partners, CRS conducts feasibility studies and design for new sites, development of springs, rehabilitation of deep boreholes, drilling of new boreholes and support for communities in their construction and use of household toilets.

In addition, CRS builds the capacity of community members and staff of government partners and stakeholders through the ongoing provision of WASH and water point committee training. CRS WASH projects support communities through the development, rehabilitation and upgrading of multiple use water projects.