How the school feeding component of a WFP and UNICEF programme, backed by German funding, is keeping kids well-nourished and well-educated while boosting local markets
“I get lunch every day and when I go back home, I am full,” says Abdifatah Mohamed, a first-grader in Jabuuti Primary School in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. “We have just gotten new types of meals; I didn’t have this before. I am very happy to come to school.”
“I love eating meals at school; today, my classmates and I were talking about hot meals, because [they] have made us very happy,” adds Saabrinin Mohamed, one of Abdifatah’s schoolmates. “I’d like to study at this school until I grow up. …
“I can find more ways to generate my own income and buy anything I need from the market.”
By Marwa Awad and Akech Ngang
Many of us do not realize how hard it can be for people living in areas of conflict and humanitarian disasters to lift themselves out of poverty. In some of the most food-insecure places in South Sudan, chronic hurdles of climate change, intercommunal violence, and a lack of basic services have often stood in the way of many South Sudanese pursuing self-reliance.
Aluel Ring Deng, lives in a small village in Twic County in Warrap State. She is a smallholder farmer who has struggled to create a stable life for her family.
Despite her…
Mozambique loses an estimated 10.9 percent of its Gross Domestic Product each year to childhood undernutrition. WFP warns that the prosperity of future generations and the country is at stake.
By Sean Rajman
A small plane lands on a dirt airstrip. Four men arrive in a pick-up truck. They are here from the district Health Authority, to collect one tonne of Ready-to-Use-Supplementary-Food, or RUSF, used to treat and prevent child malnutrition.
The airstrip is in Palma Sede (Portuguese for ‘town’). It’s the only remaining secure town in the far north-east Cabo Delgado, where more than half a million people have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict. Escalating insecurity in the surrounding areas has left Palma Sede so cut-off and isolated that supplies of goods, including food, have…
Two weeks after Cyclone Eloise hit Mozambique, solidarity, and hope help victims in temporary accommodation centres.
By Yuri Arabadgi de Andrade
It was around 3 AM on 23 January when the rain and the strong wind began. A few minutes later the power supply was cut. Everything was dark. The sound of roofs being torn off the houses and huge trees hitting the ground and was terrifying for the residents of Beira, Mozambique.
“We could see the water levels rising, but it was too late to leave the house. The only thing we could do was pray for the best”…
“The future is looking bright……Now that we know we will be compensated if our crops are damaged, we are much more motivated to pay insurance fees and increase productivity”
The effects of climate change are threatening the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Rwanda. Climatic shocks such as heavy rains, droughts, hail, and destructive winds have damaged crops and reduced food security.
Most recently, two consecutive rainy seasons of above-average rainfall (September-December 2019 short rains and March-May 2020 long rains) led to localized floods and landslides which resulted in 317 deaths and the loss of livelihoods across Rwanda.
The land belonging to the KOAMAGI and KOAMANYA GISHUBI cooperatives is particularly vulnerable to flooding. The cooperatives are situated along the Akanyaru River which straddles the Rwanda-Burundi border and provides fertile…
The personal story of Vincent Ndeke, WFP’s Head of Shipping in Mombasa, Kenya
Story by Martin Karimi
Vincent Ndeke was born in Kenya’s Kitui County east of Nairobi. The 48-year-old father of four works for the World Food Programme (WFP) overseeing shipping at the Port of Mombasa which is one of the largest port operations in the region.
Vincent’s job is complex and requires precision. …
The NGO Solidarité Féminine (Sisterhood) uses cash and a whole lot more to help women in the capital
By Alicia Torbay
Hawa Mohammed Robleh and 200 other women crowd into the Djibouti office of the local Non-Governmental Organization Solidarité Féminine (Sisterhood) to collect a food voucher from the World Food Programme (WFP).
The women fill forms with their name and the size of their families before picking up their voucher from a WFP staff member. While waiting for her turn, she steps out of the noisy hall and starts talking about her life and her children.
“I’ve been coming here since I was a teenager,” she says. …
How the UN Humanitarian Air Service in Sudan helps tens of thousands of refugees from the Tigray region of Ethiopia get the emergency assistance they desperately need
By Leni Kinzli
They arrived with little or nothing, many having trekked across the Ethiopia — Sudan border on foot or across a river on makeshift rafts. Fleeing conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, tens of thousands of civilians sought safety in neighbouring Sudan.
“We were in our town, doing our jobs, when we heard a huge explosion and started to flee to the Sudanese border,” said Dejen Fantay, a 25-year-old refugee staying in Um Rakuba Camp in Gedaref State.
“The event was abrupt, and no one even had money in their pockets. …
“Receiving mobile money… allows me to purchase what I want from every shop, and I can pay school fees, water and electricity bills while I am at home,” says 49-year old Amina Ismail Omar, sitting outside her home in the Somali capital of Mogadishu to watch her children as they play. “[It] has also reduced the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“One of the main advantages of this service is that I can transfer money and it is secure,” adds 28-year old Shamsa Shanow Ahmed, resting beneath the shade of a tree with four of her six children. …
While COVID-19 forced students to stay at home, Rwandan schools supported by the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme built new water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in partnership with World Vision International
Story by Daniel Kibsgaard
Providing new water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities and other support at schools in Rwanda are part of WFP’s Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) holistic approach to improve educational outcomes and bring about changes in the wider community to reinforce safe and nutritious eating habits.
This feeds into the government’s scale-up of school feeding across the country.
Some 600,000 students receive meals…
