Dambi's Story

Dambi Dida is a pastoralist, like his father and grandfather before him. He relies on money from livestock sales and selling milk from his goats to provide for his wife and young children. In southern Ethiopia where Dambi lives drought has made life hard for pastoralists. Without vegetation to graze on their goats and cattle simply die.

Working alongside our sister agencies CAFOD and Trócaire, local partners CIFA, and with funding from the UK government, SCIAF has been able to help Dambi by introducing him to a specialist insurance scheme created for pastoralists.

Dambi pays a small amount of his earnings to join the scheme. If the worst happens and the vegetation his goats and cattle rely on for food fails to grow, he receives an emergency payout to compensate him.

This means Dambi can buy food and other essentials for his family. Since joining the scheme in 2017 Dambi has received four of these vital payouts.

Dambi continued:

“I used to pray to God and would wait to see what happened, there was nothing else I could do. My neighbours, good pastoralists and herd workers, killed themselves due to the stress of drought, leaving their families to fend for themselves. I just said to myself, we have to keep going.

I now have the ability to protect my family from some of the worst effects of drought, I’ve taken back control of our future and it’s a wonderful feeling. My family are physically and mentally more stable than before, and our lives are happier. My family now have a more secure future, and I’m feeling confident that life will be okay.”