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Concern announces €1m aid partnership with South Korean government

Press release31 July 2018

Concern Worldwide has today announced a new partnership with the South Korean government to provide life-saving nutrition to children and pregnant women in Kenya.

Concern Worldwide CEO Dominic MacSorley with Concern Worldwide Korea Country Manager Jun Mo Lee at an event in 2017. Photo: Eun Young Kim/Concern Worldwide
Concern Worldwide CEO Dominic MacSorley with Concern Worldwide Korea Country Manager Jun Mo Lee at an event in 2017. Photo: Eun Young Kim/Concern Worldwide

The deal will see Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) provide €1 million in funding through its Innovative Partnership Solution (IPS) programme to Ireland’s largest humanitarian aid agency over the next five years.

The Concern Worldwide initiative aims to improve health and nutrition among children and pregnant women in poor urban informal settlements in Nairobi County.

Fifty per cent of all child deaths under the age of five in Kenya are associated with malnutrition and the levels of undernutrition in Nairobi informal settlements are extremely high, due to risk factors including limited household food security and poor access to safe water.

“This is a hugely important partnership for Concern Worldwide and we are delighted to be teaming up with the IPS programme to tackle the issue of malnutrition in Kenya. One in three children in the Nairobi County region face stunted growth due to malnutrition so early intervention is vitally important,” said Richard Dixon, Director of Public Affairs with Concern Worldwide.

Concern first opened a fundraising office in South Korea in 2015 and this is the second funding allocation it has received from KOICA.

The South Korean agency has partnered with a diverse range of aid organisations globally in an effort to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Major partners include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Challenge for Development, Saving Lives at Birth, Max-Plank Institute and the Education Above All Initiative.

The Concern Worldwide programme will begin this month and run until March 2023.

Concern, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, has worked in Kenya since 2002 and focuses its work in rural Marsabit County in the north of the country and the informal settlements and slums of Nairobi.

The multisectoral programme includes urban and rural livelihood, primary education, water and sanitation, health and nutrition.

In 2007, Concern adopted an innovative cash-transfer programme via mobile phones for vulnerable householders in urban slums and has also developed the Maker Movement for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health programme, which aims to forge a strong partnership between clinicians and biomedical engineers at Kenyatta National Hospital and engineers at the University of Nairobi.

For more information, contact Communications Officer Marie Madden on 087-1205470 or email at marie.madden@concern.net

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