World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

A partnership of humanitarian organizations working with community volunteers in South Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has helped demobilize thousands of children formerly associated with armed groups in the province. (..) While UNICEF funds the programme and CTO oversees the demobilization process, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) undertakes family tracing and provides medical support; a network of 34 foster families hosts youth close to their homes in remote areas of the province; community volunteers regularly monitor the reintegration process; and, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) provides food for the children at CTO.

On some days, some children eat, others do not. On other days, all the children eat, and the adults do not. Or vice versa. (..) Délestage is universally used in French-speaking Africa to describe these state-decreed power cutoffs, but when applied to rationing food it illustrates a stark survival calculus, one the head of a household must painfully impose on the rest. (..) The food délestage is not new in Congo, a country rich in minerals and verdant landscapes yet also one of the hungriest on earth, according to experts. Foreign donors finance “all agricultural projects,” Dr. Eric Tollens said, and “massive amounts of food” are imported in this rich land, so food is expensive.

A baby hangs from a rudimentary medical scale, crying desperately for his mother. Dietician Nicole Bahati notes his weight, 6.5 kilograms (14 pounds). (...°This Uzima Center, along with the vitamin- and mineral-enriched "powerbrew" offered by the UN's World Food Program, has given the child a second chance at life In the eastern DRC regions of North Kivu, South Kivu and Maniema, half of the population don't even know where their next meal will come from. In total, 4.3 million Congolese people are mired in famine, trying simply to survive. (...) According to the UN's World Food Program, roughly 1.4 million children under five years of age are chronically malnourished.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says is being forced to reduce rations for Congolese refugees in Rwanda. WFP relies on voluntary donations for its hunger relief missions around the globe. The agency faces funding shortages for many of its relief operations.

A shortage of funds has forced the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to halve its food rations for tens of thousands of Congolese refugees in Rwanda beginning on 1 September.

Urban farming in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is providing a livelihood for thousands of city dwellers, with vegetables bringing in good money for small growers and helping to alleviate high levels of malnutrition nationally, agricultural officials say. (..) A 2009 survey by Programme National de Nutrition, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) showed alarmingly high levels of wasting among urban and rural children.

Brazil has donated 200 tonnes of maize for DR Congo refugees in Congo's northern department of Likouala. (..)The maize was obtained by the World Food Programme (WFP), which purchased it from farmers in the Congo's southern department of Bouenza, to enable them to access national and regional markets to fight against poverty.

Eighteen months after fleeing across the riverine border separating the two Congos, some 120,000 refugees seem to have little prospect of returning home soon. (..)Numerous cases of domestic and sexual violence have been reported by refugee women, according to UNHCR and the World Food Programme (WFP).

It's noon at Jean-Félix Tchicaya Primary in Pointe Noire, the economic capital of Congo. Students are settling into their chairs, but not to resume their lessons. They are waiting eagerly for the hot meal that's served in the classroom each day, their plates already laid out on their desks. (..) According to the school's administrators, the World Food Programme (WFP) provides them with 756 meals each day, covering every grade from grades one to five.

A provincial governor in the Democratic Republic of Congo has offered about 14 million hectares of farmland to large-scale farmers to boost agriculture in the mineral-rich Katanga province.(..)"I think the conditions for producing food are better here than in neighbouring countries; (here) they have land, water, people," the WFP's country head, Abdu Dieng, told Reuters.