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To raise awareness of the dire situation in Faryab and the stark reality of poverty and food insecurity facing so many Afghans, Jennifer is herself living on USD $1 for food per day for 30 days.

  Jennifer says:

“I have seen the impact of this in the north with my own eyes: the parched, fallow land and tired, drawn faces of parents who cannot provide for their children. While violent conflict is ongoing in south Afghanistan , Afghans in the northern region are fighting their own war against hunger and crippling poverty. As Hajji Ahmad, the leader of Ahmadabad village explains, if he eats lunch he will not have any food for dinner. If Hajji Ahmad, the most powerful man in the village, is lacking sufficient nutrition, how are the other village members holding up?”

Jennifer's blog http://waterflows.typepad.com records her 30 days' survival on this small daily sum so that others understand the struggle faced by so many, but if you would like to cover the story of this remarkable woman and raise awareness and funds to provide interim livelihood inputs to Ahmadabad, (a particularly vulnerable village north of Maimana city) please contact: jennifer.mccarthy@kcl.ac.uk

You can speak to Jennifer directly on the phone (until June 2009) at +93 (0) 775 093 721

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Notes for Editors:

According to UN OCHA, half of the Afghan population lives on less than USD$1 per day.

As reported by IRIN in February 2009, "High food prices, drought and conflict have pushed about eight million of the country's estimated 27 million people into high-risk food insecurity."

USD $1 is equal to 52 Afghanis (Afs) or roughly GBP 0.70, and is set by the World Bank as the international poverty line.

The people of the Faryab Provice have been silently suffering drought and increasing food prices while the world's attention focuses mainly on Afghanistan 's southern provinces. The current drought began in

2004 and its impact is being dangerously exacerbated by rising food prices and collapsing job markets. The global financial crisis is truly global and has not left remote Faryab unscathed.

30 year old Jennifer McCarthy has been living and researching in Afghanistan on and off for the past four years. The Canadian citizen is currently living in the remote villages of Faryab Province in northwest Afghanistan , where she is struck by the increasing poverty and vulnerability in the region. Most live below the World Bank official poverty line of a dollar a day.