World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Since a typhoon destroyed their home last year, Mildred's family has been living on a beach. Their fishing boat damaged and their savings exhausted, they had nowhere to turn. But their fortunes are changing with a programme that takes care of food needs as they rebuild their lives.

Nearly 50,000 Filipinos evacuated from their homes in the shadow of the Mount Mayon volcano received some welcome assistance from WFP on Thursday, when packages of high energy biscuits arrived in evacuation centres set up by the government.

After Typhoon Ketsana dumped the heaviest rain in decades on Manila, wrecking her home, Joralyn Castillo and her family were in danger of sliding into hunger and destitution. Emergency rice rations from WFP are helping make sure that doesn’t happen.

WFP has distributed over 230 tons of High Energy Biscuits in the Philippines as part of its response to the recent typhoons. Intent on seeing how the biscuits get from factory to beneficiary, Martin Penner followed one packet all the way to a little boy called Antonio. Watch video

Typhoon Mirinae, which swept across the northern Philippines last weekend, dumped another 15 cm of rain on regions already severely flooded by previous storms. The fourth storm in little more than a month has made food assistance more important than ever.

WFP and the world's generosity is ensuring that the flood-hit Philippines is not alone as it works to help more than 7 million people get back on their feet after the devastation caused by recent storms.

As WFP and the government push ahead with relief operations to help flood-hit communities, the northern island of Luzon is waiting to see whether a new typhoon - dubbed Lupit - will hit later this week, disrupting operations and possibly increasing the need for emergency food assistance.

In the face of mounting logistical challenges, WFP has brought in helicopters and inflatable boats to provide food assistance to hundreds of thousands of victims of the two major tropical storms that recently ravaged the Philippines.

Over the coming month, WFP aims to provide food assistance to 1 million people affected by the severe flooding that Ketsana and other tropical storms have caused in Manila and neighbouring areas of the Philippines over the last week.