World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

For many years, not having enough to eat meant that Agnes struggled to stay on her antiretroviral treatment. Thanks to food assistance from WFP, she can now take her medication more regularly, provide for her family and help others in her community.

In northern Ghana WFP food-for-assets projects, which provided much needed food assistance to participants during the 'hunger season', are helping rehabilitate the declining fish population.

One of the biggest challenges for smallholders is getting a fair price for their produce. In West Africa, too often buyers take advantage of farmers, demanding that bags are filled to the brim instead of paying per kg. Farmers in Ghana were recently surprised about their financial remuneration when they used a weighing scale for their sales for the first time.

In 2009, Mariama Baba became one of 30,000 girls in Ghana who receive WFP take-home rations when they attend school regularly. 

By combining the expertise of different partners, P4P can offer farmers technical support and build their capacity in order to increase their production, raise the quality of their output and get better prices.

In early September, WFP nutrition focal points and their government counterparts from 18 countries across West Africa gathered in Dakar for a four-day workshop. 
 

Pandemics and large-scale disasters pose specific challenges to humanitarian emergency operations, especially in urban areas. Through a recent one-week pandemic simulation, WFP aimed to prepare countries in West Africa to face these challenges so that they can better assist vulnerable populations.

A group of businesswomen in the Gbumbgum region of northeastern Ghana has found a route out of poverty through a product which their community badly needs—iodated salt. Iodine deficiency is rampant in Gbumbgum, where the swollen necks of people suffering from goitre are a common sight. Watch video

Ghana, Guatemala, Bangladesh and Cape Verde are just a few of the countries where national governments, working with WFP and others, are taking effective steps to fight hunger themselves. WFP is marking World Food Day this year by spotlighting these successes and the importance of partnerships.

WFP has bought US $780,000 of Ghanaian rice for school meals in some of the country’s poorest regions. The programme benefits thousands of school children and local farmers, many of them women, who received a fair price for their crops.