World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP distributes its food assistance, having a priori identified the people most in need. Working together with local NGOs, community committees and local authorities, WFP and Cooperating partners establish who is most at risk based on agreed vulnerability selection criteria. Ration cards are provided to beneficiaries, making distributions as efficient as possible.

More than 200,000 vulnerable households in six out of seven provinces – Batken, Issyk-Kul, Jalal-Abad, Naryn, Osh and Talas –receive two-month WFP rations of fortified wheat flour and vegetable oil, totalling some 2,184 metric tons of food in spring 2011.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, WFP implements a Vulnerable Group Feeding Programme, seeking to assist the food insecure population to get through the most critical times of the year - winter and spring. WFP’s assistance consists of fortified wheat flour and vegetable oil. In 2010, nearly 400,000 severely food insecure people were assisted in this way throughout the country.

Several families from a village united their efforts to bring their three-month food rations home. This food assistance will help them live through the coldest months when food is scarcest and prices are at their highest. 

WFP field monitors are verifying beneficiary lists to ensure the most vulnerable people from rural communities have been selected. 

According to a recent WFP food security assessment conducted in March 2011, 14 percent of the population were found to be severely food insecure, compared to four percent in August 2010.  WFP assists the most food insecure in rural communities nationwide through direct food assistance and by improving rural infrastructure. 

Many poor rural families are in need of seasonal support to ensure they are able to make it through the most food-deficient months. This way WFP can ensure the poorest and most food insecure people will have the best possible opportunity to improve their livelihoods.

Women are queuing up at a WFP distribution point to receive their spring food ration consisting of 50 kg of wheat flour and 5 liters of vegetable oil (for an average family of 5). 

Local authorities in rural communities across the Kyrgyz Republic are also involved in WFP food distributions, by preparing local storage facilities and distribution points.

Women and children make up more than a half of the beneficiary caseload of WFP’s Vulnerable Group Feeding Programme.

Food assistance to the most vulnerable in rural communities help them meet their basic food needs during the most critical times without engaging in harmful coping strategies such as reducing food rations, getting indebted or selling important assets.

Beneficiary families prepare all available transportation means – cars, bicycles, donkey carts – to bring their food rations home. WFP makes sure that the distance of its distribution points to the beneficiaries’ houses is not more than 10 km.