World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Thanks to this initiative a group of Guatemala women living with HIV learn about their condition, to give emotional support to one another and to develop new skills that will allow them to earn a living and put food on the table for their families.

Helping poor rural women become successful farmers is one of the best ways to build a food-secure world. That’s what the P4P programme is doing in Guatemala –with major support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) - teaching women how to grow food to eat and sell on local markets. It's just one example of what investing in women farmers can achieve:

The families live in the departments of Baja Verapaz, El Progreso, Jutiapa and El Quiché, which are located in the so-called “Dry Corridor”, a region affected by a prolonged drought. Meanwhile the Government of Guatemala is providing food assistance to other families in the departements of Chiquimula, Zacapa and Jalapa.

Hector is an assistant in the VAM (Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping) unit of WFP’s Guatemala office. His job is mainly to carry out food security and nutrition assessments and to produce maps displaying this information. He also helps with managing information databases.              
 

Mam is a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala and Mexico by about 500,000 people. The Guatemala Ministry of Education and WFP have been trained in this language to more than 300 teachers of bilingual schools in the use of textbooks in Mam among students to promote gender equality, food security and nutrition, and other topics.

The World Food Programme in partnership with Radio National Corporation (RCN) launched the campaign "1,000 Days to Change a Life." This 2-month campaign aims to raise awareness among Guatemala's 14 million population about the impact of chronic malnutrition, which affects nearly 50 percent of Guatemalan children under 5 years of age.

The World Food Programme thanked the Government of Brazil for its support to the Emergency and Recovery Operation in Guatemala which targets the most vulnerable population hit by Tropical Depression 12E in October 2011.

Peruvian native Luis Cabrera, who is finishing the first year of his Mickey Leland fellowship in WFP's Guatemala office, talked about growing up during Peru's civil war, and the challenges Guatemala faces today.

Vilma Argueta and Catarina Sapón are part of a network of 228 volunteer mother peer counselors working in local communities to encourage good feeding practices and care for children under 3 years. They work in 40 indigenous communities of the seven municipalities in Totonicapán, which has one of the highest rates of chronic undernutrition (82.2%) in Guatemala.

Two months after Tropical Depression 12-E, thousands of poor Guatemalans living in vulnerable areas have lost their livelihoods due to the heavy rains, floods and landslides that affected the country.