World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

[News article in Spanish] The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the World Food Programme signed an agreement to push joined efforts that will lead to higher agricultural productivity within Latin America and the Caribbean, in a way that would strengthen the access of its inhabitants towards healthy and better quality of foods.  The General Director of IICA, Victor M. Villalobos, affirmed: “More than a document, this agreement is a commitment with all the countries where the IICA and WFP work together. We will also explore the posibilieties in other parts of the hemisphere in order to share our experiences, especially the ones we reach to work with farmers in a small scale.”. The Executive Director of World Food Programme, Erthain Cousin, seeks to consolidate the work of both organizations for the programme Purchase for Progress(P4P), which has been running in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2009.

In the community of San Francisco de Coray, Valle, maize and beans will only last for 15 days.  In the dry corridor, there are 82 municipalities affected by lack of food.

One of the most exciting moments in my recent media tour of U.S. and UN food security projects in Honduras came in the middle of a lush vegetable field in the township of Las Pavas. Surrounded by lettuce, broccoli, carrots and radishes, Nora Diaz told me that thanks to their home garden, her family -- unlike many in Honduras -- was able to stay together.(...)

We all knew there would eventually be another "something" akin to Hurricane Mitch in Honduras. (..) The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has begun distributing food supplies in the south. However, what will soon be be required are sufficient quantities of seeds for replanting lost crops.

Thousands of Hondurans took to the streets on Sunday to take part in a hunger march and show support for a legislative proposal to ensure food supply for the poor. It was the sixth consecutive year that the "zero hunger" march was staged in the capital city and the northern city of San Pedro Sula, in coordination with the World Food Program (WFP). (..) According to WFP country representative Miguel Barreto, some 300,000 children under 5 suffer from malnutrition in the country, which lead to epidemics such as diarrhea and respiratory problems.

A violent weekend storm that lashed Central America killed at least 144 people, left 53 more missing and 45,000 evacuated from their homes, the Red Cross' Panama-based regional headquarters said. (..) More than 8,000 people were forced to leave their homes in El Salvador, and more than 3,000 in Honduras, which has received 225,000 dollars in help from regional banks, in addition to 500,000 dollars and 5,000 tons of food from the UN's World Food Program.

The National Congress of Honduras today approved a motion to declare a national emergency due to drought and famine affecting several regions of the country. (...) The government of President Porfirio Lobo Sosa is working with the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide food to almost 50 thousand vulnerable families.

If anybody knows Pati Castillo in Houston, please tell her to phone home. Pati is a 30-year-old Honduran whose children and other family members live in a gang-ridden slum here in the Honduran capital. (..) “One-sixth of the people on earth are hungry,” said Josette Sheeran, director of the United Nations World Food Program. “We’re seeing epidemics of child malnutrition.” Ms. Sheeran notes that evidence has mounted that babies who are malnourished in their first two years of life are likely to suffer lifelong intellectual impairments that later feeding can never overcome.

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with one out of three children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. Natural disasters like drought and flooding have all had a major impact on Honduras in recent years. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is emphasizing school feeding to combat hunger and poverty. Jaime Vallaure, WFP country director for Honduras, recently discussed the importance of school meals for children.

The UN's World Food Program in Honduras appears to be working the way development aid should, and Canada has stepped into a lead role. What's going right? For one thing, in the decade since this Central American country was laid low by Hurricane Mitch -- a disaster that left scars that still linger -- the number of children fed through a school-feeding program has grown from 200,000 to 1.3 million. That's a big deal in a country where one child in four is chronically malnourished. [...] Food aid, [Jamie Vallaure, the WFP representative in Honduras ] points out, can be remarkably cost-efficient. WFP spent $5 billion last year, up from $3.5 billion in 2007 as a result of the steep rise in food prices, to feed 100 million of the 900 million who need help. But nearly two-thirds of this money goes to feed just one-third of recipients, those who are hit by war or famine or natural disasters and are at imminent risk of starvation.