An
airplane from the Mission Aviation Fellowship program in South
Africa is flying to Kenya to reinforce the group’s
response to the famine in the Horn of Africa.
On Wednesday the United Nations declared a famine in
parts of southern Somalia. Across the region, 11 million people are
facing a hunger crisis caused by several years of severe drought.
Over the past week MAF has flown leaders from relief and
mission organizations, as well as ambassadors from several countries,
into the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to assess the crisis. MAF is also experiencing increasing demand for flights into
South Sudan following the country’s independence earlier this month.
“MAF is in contact with a number of relief organizations
working in the area,” says John Woodberry, MAF manager of disaster
response and security. “We are ramping up our capacity to respond should
the need for relief flights continue to grow.”
With this additional plane, MAF will have seven aircrafts
in Kenya. To maximize flight capacity, MAF crews have been working into
the night so that planes are ready to depart early each morning.
A significant part of this global network, MAF-US is
headquartered in Nampa, Idaho. In addition to its aviation services,
MAF-US also provides communication systems and learning technologies to
share the gospel and improve the quality of life in remote areas of
Africa, Asia, Eurasia and Latin America.
