The ERD provided food supplies to the Sudanese border, where it was picked up by REST and ERA to be distributed in Tigray and Eritrea.

[7][8] REST played a crucial role to undercut the Addis Ababa government's attempts to use famine as a means to obtain control over Tigray.

Unable to cope with the humanitarian disaster, REST and TPLF decided to encourage Tigrayans to seek food at distribution centres operated by the Addis Ababa government.

It also managed to change the attitude of the Sudanese government towards the resistance movements in Ethiopia (allowing the TPLF to operate, whilst ending support to the Ethiopian Democratic Union).

The organization lobbied, through its office in Khartoum, that the ICRC would send two helicopters to spray against locusts (an operation that eventually got the necessary go-ahead permission from the government in Addis Ababa).

[4] A 1996 document, circulated amongst diplomatic circles in Addis Ababa, alleged that REST (along with other organizations) channeled funds to the governing Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front.

Each pump serves a few hundred people, and is managed by the community, who will appoint a guard, and a "water committee" that collects user fees and verifies cleanness.

As a consequence the baseflow in rivers improves, and the water can be used to establish irrigation schemes[19] It has been demonstrated also that such land terraced by REST was able to absorb runoff coming in from upslope.

[1] Through its activities and by targeted capacity building, REST contributes to empowering women, farmers, and overall the rural households.

[1] During the Tigray War, one of the big problems to distribute aid was the absence of structures to reach out the needy.

[32] During the conflict, the different humanitarian organizations (i.e. WFP, REST, WV, CARE, FH) have actively engaged in food distributions in different parts of the region.

For instance, the Relief Society of Tigray reached more than 1 million people with food aid (in cooperation with USAID) per month in the first half of 2021.