World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

ROME – During her tour of Africa, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited four countries – Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Cape Verde -- where the World Food Programme is working to address urgent hunger needs and improve the lives of people struggling to meet their daily nutritional requirements.

Below is a brief summary of WFP’s activities in each of these four nations:

WFP has started air dropping food into Dungu in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to reach more than 130,000 displaced people and their host families who have been cut off by heavy seasonal rains.

Route Nationale 3 is a lifeline for thousands of people who depend on WFP for food. It’s also a kidney-bruising, stomach-churning morass of hills, holes, greasy mud and rickety bridges. Take a look

Five months ago the son of a WFP food aid monitor was kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Without any warning, on March 16, the boy hobbled onto the airstrip in Dungu where his father was working.

The United Nations Secretary General, on a visit to a WFP-assisted camp for displaced people in eastern Congo, was encouraged by the news that – thanks to improved security in the region -- many families are returning to their homes.

After months in a camp for displaced people, the Shamamba family is returning to the home that it was forced to abandon amid last autumn's upsurge in fighting. WFP food kept the family going in the camp and will help now that it's going home.

Ennock Bigumba is a driver for WFP in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He also works as a translator for WFP’s international staff on the ground. Caroline Hurford traveled with him on a recent mission for WFP.

Amani was kidnapped when he was 11 and for the next two years he was a child soldier, shooting his rifle in whatever direction he was told to. Now, at a WFP-supported centre in Goma, he is learning to be a normal adolescent.

A UN convoy loaded with humanitarian supplies staggered into the town of Dungu on Monday after an 11-day, 700-kilometre, churn through swampy mud into the strife-torn northeast corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dungu, DRC, 22 December 2008 - Life has improved in the town of Dungu, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, since WFP carried out a food distribution here in mid-December. Until then, Dungu was one of the war-ravaged corners of the country that simply had to fend for itself.