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School Meals
3 July 2009

"School Meals Make A Difference," Says Teacher

The principal of a primary school in Sierra Leone explains how WFP school meals have made a difference to her school. As the West African nation works to recover from a civil war, WFP is helping it build a better future by feeding kids in almost 1,000 schools.
Responding to Emergencies
3 July 2009

Bread Provided To Hungry Displaced In Sri Lanka

WFP and its humanitarian partners recently provided another lifeline to tens of thousands of people who have fled the recent conflict in Sri Lanka. Thanks to a coordinated initiative between the government, NGOs and the business community, three of Sri Lanka’s largest bakeries baked fresh bread for the hungry displaced using ingredients from WFP’s food basket.
Responding to Emergencies
2 July 2009

Pakistan: WFP Helps Returnee Family Begin Anew

Mohammed Gulab and his family are among the relatively few Pakistanis who have been able to return to their homes in the northern regions affected by fighting over the last year. WFP is now distributing food to them and other returnee families so they can begin again.
Responding to Emergencies
1 July 2009

The Billionth Hungry Person In The World?

Gulandam didn’t use to need food assistance in order to feed her family. Her husband, earns about 100 Afs (US$2) a day, working as a porter in Kabul City, and this was enough to get by. It isn’t any more.
Responding to Emergencies
29 June 2009

Kenya: Hunger Mounts As Drought Hits Herders

As Kenya’s drought destroys pasture land, herder communities are feeling the brunt of the regional hunger crisis. Marcus Prior travelled to the northern Laikipia region to see the devastating effects of the drought on one community now receiving WFP support.
Responding to Emergencies
25 June 2009

Camp Cooking Stoves Help Hungry In Pakistan

As WFP delivers food assistance to more than 2 million people affected by conflict in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, some families are getting the opportunity to cook their own food in new kitchens that have been set up in places like Yar Hussein camp in Swabi.
Logistics
22 June 2009

Monster Chopper Lifts Food In Southern Sudan

The world’s biggest helicopter has begun airlifting food aid into a remote part of Southern Sudan after river boats trying to deliver urgently needed WFP supplies were attacked. The airlift comes amidst growing concerns about the fragile security situation in the south.
Food For Assets
21 June 2009

WFP Helps Haitians Work To Protect City From Mud

With WFP support, a system of stone-lined ditches is being built on the hills overlooking Gonaives in a bid to prevent a repeat of last year when mudslides buried the north Haitian city, contributing to a severe hunger crisis.
Aid professionals
19 June 2009

Number Of World’s Hungry Tops A Billion

There are more hungry people in the world than ever before. More than one billion people, almost a sixth of humanity, are now undernourished, according to the latest estimates from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Purchase for Progress
19 June 2009

Small Farmers Scale Up To Grow Rice For WFP

WFP has for the first time bought food from small scale farmers in Kenya, acquiring food for drought-hit Kenyans elsewhere in the country while at the same time encouraging small farmers to think more about markets.

latest media

Videos   19 June 2009
World Refugee Day
Videos   16 June 2009
Living With an Uncertain Future
Videos   21 May 2009
Monster Trucks

Worth reading

Thought-provoking articles that deal with hunger and the issues involved in meeting the hunger challenge.

  • The Guardian

    For all the debate on the worth of aid, we can well afford to pay the price

    From a distance, it could have been a scene from a Constable painting: an idyllic pastoral of cattle feeding from a spring ­surrounded by green ­pastures and shaded by handsome trees. But we were in the middle of Africa and the cattle were paddling in the waters on which the local villages depend. More than 40 jerrycans were neatly lined up in a queue to fill up from the trickle of water coming from a dirty pipe. The chatter and squeals of laughter of a waiting crowd of girls reverberated across the marshes. They told us that it would be more than four hours before all would have had their turn. Four hours a day just to get water.
  • New York Times

    Pregnant (Again) and Poor

    For all the American and international efforts to fight global poverty, one thing is clear: Those efforts won’t get far as long as women like Nahomie Nercure continue to have 10 children. [...] As we walked through Cité Soleil, the Haitian slum where she lives, her elementary-school-age children ran stark naked around her. The $6-a-month rental shack that they live in — four sleep on the bed, six on the floor beside it — has no food of any kind in it. The family has difficulty paying the fees to keep the children in school. There’s simply no way to elevate Nahomie’s family, and millions like it around the world, unless we help such women have fewer children.
  • Washington Post

    'Dead Aid,' Dead Wrong

    The broad American belief that foreign aid is stuffed down tropical rat holes has been recently reinforced by a young Zambian, Oxford-trained economist named Dambisa Moyo. Her book, "Dead Aid," has launched her as a conservative celebrity, feted by Steve Forbes and embraced by the Cato Institute. And the book is something of a marvel: Seldom have so many sound economic arguments been employed to justify such disastrously wrongheaded conclusions.
  • The Chronicle - US Council on Foreign Relations

    The Future of Foreign Assistance

    This report by the Council for Foreign Relations urges the United States to "stay the course in health and development aid goals". The report notes that "no question of disease, survival or longevity can be separated from larger development issues, food security or humanitarian crises". The section most relevant to WFP and food assistance starts on page 24.
  • Liberation

    What Do African Women Eat?

    Mathilde Savy and her teams have investigated this question in Burkina Faso for 3 years. In rural areas, they found that women's diet was very monotonous, based on cereals, vegetables and condiments. Meat, fish and fruits were rare and reserved for men.
  • IRIN News

    Malawi: Cheaper Recipe for Treating Hungry Children

    A peanutty paste has revolutionized the treatment of chronically malnourished children. It's a ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) that here in Malawi is called Plumpy'nut Chiponde.
  • Foreign Affairs

    Arrested Development

    USAID has become ineffective because it is underfunded, understaffed, and losing influence. The next president should revive it by either making it autonomous or elevating it to a cabinet-level department.
  • The Washington Quarterly

    The Coming Food Coups

    The doubling of grain prices over the past two years has already set off violent protests in over 30 developing countries and led to the overthrow of the Haitian prime minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. Even so, the potential political and security consequences have been given little attention, writes Andrew Natsios.
  • History News Network

    Food For Peace: Eisenhower's Unsung Initiative Can Be Obama's Most Powerful Tool for Peace

    As President Obama tackles enormous foreign policy challenges, he would be well-advised to extract good ideas from past administrations and carry forward this "better part of history," writes William Lambers.
  • The Observer

    Our Culture of Wasting Food Will One Day Leave Us Hungry

    All the talk of genetically modifying crops would be unnecessary if the supermarkets - and consumers - weren't so wasteful, says Alex Renton.