University of Southern Somalia-Baidoa (USS)
Thursday, September 08, 2011
The University of Southern Somalia (USS) is gearing up all of its efforts and resources in the Fall semester of (August - December 2011) to respond more efficiently to the humanitarian crisis that engulfed in the southern Somalia region, where the USS main campus is located. The Board of the USS university having witnessed the large scale of suffering due to this extraordinary drought has decided to divert all the University’s resources of management, academia, its internal and Diaspora members and its student body to reorganize and respond to this severe humanitarian crisis in providing food and medicinal assistance by redirecting the University’s funds to alleviate this dire situation.
In the past, the East Africa Foundation and the University of Southern Somalia responded to the development and social needs of the region by providing top quality educational and other human capacity building initiatives, including teacher training and conflict resolution seminars with the support of the Norwegian Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. USS mainly relies on its internal and Diaspora resources to function and maintain its capacity in order to cover the education gap that resulted from the lack of an effective central government in the country for the past two decades. In addition to the various disciplines that the university offers to its students, in every summer USS also carries out training programs for the local population throughout southern Somalia.
Due to the worst drought that struck the Horn of Africa in the last 60 years, which created a real catastrophe of mass proportions, the educational objectives of USS had to take a backseat. The East Africa Foundation and the USS have realized that we have a rather compelling role to play in order to alleviate the plight of the people in the region and stop their mass migration to other regions of Somalia, such as Mogadishu and neighboring countries (Kenya and Ethiopia). This mass migrations is causing severe humanitarian suffering since most of the population in the region cannot afford to obtain means of good transportation, they are compelled to walk long distances of more than 400km, which entail an unimaginable suffering and unprecedented scale of loss of life due to thirst, hunger, and diseases.
In fact, the famine in southern Somalia is further aggravated by the perception in the international community’s mind that the region is under the influence of Al-Shabaab, an insurgent Islamic militant group that most aid donors do not want to deal with, therefore aid cannot be delivered to that part of the country. This perception is rather skewed and dangerous because if aid is not delivered to the most affected by the famine region in Somalia, the generous donations from the international community will be a lost cause.
The University of Southern Somalia has always functioned independently from the influence of any political group by honestly, efficiently, and transparently providing an important educational need in the region. And from that perspective without being aligned or co-opted by any political or religious groups present in the region, the University provides the real capacity building direly needed in that region.
We seek your support to donate whatever you can afford to open and maintain a refugee camp in Southern Somalia, the source of the real disaster in Somalia. Also, we seek any technical support you can contribute in running and maintaining feeding centers with medical care capacities.
The Board of Directors
The Board of Advisors
University of Southern Somalia
http://www.uss-baidoa.org/
[email protected]