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. …

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 through school feeding supported by the Government of Rwanda. WFP’s HGSF programme in turn supports the Government to provide daily nutritious school meals and complementary activities for 79,000 primary schools students in 107 schools in four of the most vulnerable and food-insecure districts across the country. …

Story by Daniel Kibsgaard

As the international community observes the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, WFP has partnered with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and UN Women to empower rural women in Rwanda through the Joint Programme on Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (RWEE).

The programme aims to transform gender relations among rural community members by giving these women the tools to lift themselves and their families out of extreme poverty, which also contributes to reducing gender-based and intimate partner violence

Women are supported to participate in small-scale savings groups, learn new skills and engage in income generating activities. They are also encouraged to think big and work for progress within their communities. …

Eradicating hunger and malnutrition is one of the most significant and complex challenges of our time, and the path to a Zero Hunger future requires several approaches. In addition to maintaining food and cash distributions where needed, WFP is investing in resilience and livelihood activities which allow people to help themselves. In Ethiopia, WFP is working with partners to help boost livelihood opportunities for families keen to secure their solution to their food insecurity.

Story by Edward Johnson

In one of Pinyudo’s refugee camps, in Western Ethiopia, there is a makeshift table draped with a white woven sack. Once it was used to hold food provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) but since then it has been sliced lengthwise and is now covering 15 meticulously stacked piles of dried fish which once swam in the rivers of Gambella Region. …

Story by Musa Mahadi

Since it was declared a Global Pandemic earlier this year, COVID-19 has disrupted all facets of life and affected millions of people across the world. Jobs have been lost, businesses closed and livelihoods destroyed. People have had to get creative to provide for their families; the women of South Sudan are no different.

One such woman is 31-year-old Sunday Alfred, a mother of seven and a bread maker-turned-businesswoman. Sunday used to bake Kisira (thin fermented bread that is a local food staple in the country) and sell to a local restaurant in the suburb of Gurei in Juba. …

Tough Times

Abuk Kiir, a South Sudanese mother from Aweil, remembers when she and her children had to survive off a simple diet of sorghum and flour with broth. That was all the widow could afford from the meager salary she made by selling groundnut paste at the market.

“I did not have money to buy her better food,” said Abuk Kiir pointing at her daughter, an emaciated-two-year-old with a bloated stomach and very dry, scaly skin.“She was very sick and couldn’t hold down any food in her stomach. …