World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP's development activities in Bangladesh aim to improve the long-term food security and nutrition of ultra poor households in the poorest and most food insecure rural areas and urban slums. WFP achieves this through supplementary feeding, nutrition education, food for assets and training, school feeding and capacity building activities.

 

The programme supports a total of 115,000 people, promoting the nutritional status of undernourished children under two, pregnant and breast-feeding women and adolescent girls through the provision of fortified blended foods and nutrition education for the caretakers of undernourished children and pregnant and lactating women as well as to a wider audience of community members and is aimed at improving nutrition and hygiene practices. 

The aim of WFP’s Nutrition Strategy in Bangladesh is to support the government in breaking the intergenerational cycle of undernutrition by giving priority to a child’s first 1000 days of life. The Renewed Efforts Against Child Hunger and Undernutrition (REACH) and Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiatives provide the principal coordination mechanisms.

 

The Enhancing Resilience (ER) programme currently supports 84,000 ultra poor men and women (and their families, a total of 420,000 beneficiaries) through a number of schemes. ER aims to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable households to disasters through food and cash for work projects to build disaster resilient infrastructure, such as homestead protection, canals, and embankments. This increases community and household resilience to disasters and strengthens agricultural production. During the rainy season, when work is difficult, beneficiaries attend training sessions where they learn disaster risk reduction planning, climate change adaptation and survival during crisis. The majority of participants are ultra-poor women because they face additional barriers in accessing income generating opportunities and are more vulnerable than men to the consequences of natural disasters. Going forward, the programme will include a cash grant component for investment in productive assets which will provide economic stability and increase the capacity of households to adapt in the face of crises.

 

The programme currently supports 101,600 people and aims to improve the food and nutrition security of ultra-poor women and their households in north-western Bangladesh, while at the same time providing valuable evidence to feed into WFP’s dialogue with the Government on safety net reform. It is based around a 24-month cycle which features an asset grant, a monthly stipend, savings assistance, asset growth assistance and a curriculum of specialised trainings for ultra-poor women. 

In 2009 WFP started its Food Security for the Ultra Poor (FSUP) project with financial assistance from the European Union for a period of four years. To date, 30,000 beneficiaries have received and invested their asset grant into an income generating activity. Subsequent rounds of reinvestment have seen many beneficiaries achieve significant asset growth and diversification across several businesses with the average household asset value now at 85,233 taka, an increase of over 400% since project activities began. Beneficiaries report that they are now eating three meals per day and have supported one another in contributing to regular savings targets.  

 

Through the School Feeding programme WFP distributes fortified high energy biscuits to 1.1 million rural and urban pre-primary and primary school students in high poverty areas. The provision of daily biscuits to students also act as an additional incentive for parents to keep children in school. The programme works to improve primary school enrollment, attendance and reduce dropout in selected food insecure areas as well as address micronutrient deficiencies and hunger among primary school children.  School feeding is complemented with a learning package to children, parents and other community members on topics like vegetable gardening, health, nutrition and hygiene.  WFP is also involved in capacity building with the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education to assist them in the scale up and management of the National School Feeding Programme, which is based on the WFP model and provides biscuits to an additional 1.2 million children.

 

Since 1992, WFP has provided food assistance to registered refugees who fled to Bangladesh from the Northern Rakhine State in Myanmar in 1991. The programme currently provides assistance to 31,000 refugees in two refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar. WFP’s operation aims to sustain the nutritional status and food security of the refugee population, and improve the host population’s acceptance of refugees.  People are currently assisted through four main activities: general food distribution, supplementary feeding, school feeding and food for training.

 

In 2010, WFP began to place a greater emphasis on strengthening the capacity of the Government to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its safety net programmes through training workshops and advocacy. WFP is directly involved in assisting the Government to strengthen its Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) programme and in the launching of its School Feeding programme.  WFP has been implementing the VGD programme jointly with the Government since the 1970s. Over the past 10 years, WFP’s role has gradually transitioned from that of programme implementer to systems strengthener. In January 2012, WFP opened its first Programme Support Units at the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs and a few months later, in the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education to support the VGD and National School Feeding Programmes.

 

• WFP has been assisting the poorest people of Bangladesh since 1974 and has assisted a total of 155 million people through development programmes over the past 38 years. 

• WFP has been at the forefront of responding to under-nutrition and food insecurity, helping communities reduce the risks associated with climate change, in particular floods and cyclones.

• WFP has a strong track record of partnering with the Government of Bangladesh on climate change adaptation.

• Over the past 38 years - 

- 27,053 km of roads and 17,000 km of embankments have been reconstructed (including raising roads above flood levels).

- 4,120 km of drainage/irrigation canals and 3,000 acres of water bodies (mainly ponds) have been re-excavated and brought back into productive use; and 38 million trees have been planted.

- 25,200 homestead raised and 1,000 emergency flood and cyclone shelters repaired.

- In 2011, WFP assisted 2.03 million vulnerable people, mainly women and children, and in 2012, WFP is currently assisting about 2 million vulnerable people.