Increasing women’s voice through agriculture

By Chelsea Graham, P4P, World Food Program

Throughout the pilot phase, P4P has focused on assisting women farmers to benefit economically from their work, gaining confidence and voice in their communities and homes. Mazouma Sanou, a farmer from Burkina Faso, has first-hand experience of these benefits as well as the challenges still facing women farmers.

 

“P4P started as a gender conscious project,” says P4P gender consultant Batamaka Somé’, during the 2014 P4P Annual Consultation. From its inception, he says, P4P faced many challenges to women’s empowerment, such as women’s limited access to inputs and credit, their unpaid contributions to farming, and the male-held control of household production and marketing.

 

To address these challenges, P4P’s first step was to create realistic goals, and a framework within which these could be achieved. This was documented in a gender strategy. The development of the strategy was led by the Agricultural Learning Impacts Network (ALINe), and included extensive field research and literature review, which provided a nuanced and culturally specific view of women in agriculture.

 

Today, a number of P4P’s targets related to gender have been met. Women’s participation in P4P has tripled since the beginning of the pilot, and some 200,000 women have been trained in various capacities. Skills and income gained through P4P have boosted women’s confidence, enabling them to participate and engage more in markets. However, many challenges remain to further assist women to access markets and benefit economically from their work.

 

One woman’s experience

 

Mazouma Sanou represented the Burkina Faso cooperative
union UPPA-Houet at P4P’s Annual Consultation in Rome.
Copyright: WFP/Ahnna Gudmunds

Mazouma Sanou is a 43-year old woman farmer from Burkina Faso. She is married and the mother of three children. Mazouma is a member of a P4P-supported cooperative union called UPPA-Houet. Today, the union has 20,500 members, 11,000 of whom are women. Mazouma contributes maize, sorghum, and niébé (cowpeas) to her union’s sales to WFP.

 

Mazouma also works as a field monitor paid by WFP and OXFAM to coach 25 rural women’s groups affiliated to her union, assisting them to produce and earn more. She works as an intermediary between groups and partners, and assists women to better organize their groups. She also supports them throughout the production process, making sure their products meet standards and working with them to improve their marketing and gain access to credit.

 

Changing family and community dynamics

 

P4P has contributed to an improvement in family dynamics by increasing women’s economic power through P4P-supported sales, finding that with money in their hands, women have more voice in their communities and homes. P4P and its partners also carry out gender sensitization training for both men and women, illustrating the tangible benefits which can be realized by households when women participate fully in farming activities.

 

Mazouma says that since their involvement in P4P, many women are able to make family decisions in collaboration with their husbands. She states that this has made income management easier, allowing families to plan for the possibility of unexpected illness, and to set aside money for enrolling their children in school.

 

Additionally, Mazouma has seen great changes at the community level. She says that thanks to their increased economic power, women are now more involved in decision-making and planning both in the cooperative union and their communities.

 

Challenges ahead

 

While Mazouma says that gender dynamics are certainly changing for the better in her community, she acknowledges that there are still challenges ahead. She says that certain men do resist women’s increasing voice, and that she often works with women to discuss family life and helps them negotiate with their husbands.

 

“Women have to help educate their husbands. Dialogue can certainly change attitudes, but you can’t command people to do things,” she says. “I ask the woman ‘if you get that money, what will you do,’ and she says ‘help the children,’ so I say ‘your husband can take another wife but your children can’t have another mother. Your children can really benefit from this.’”

 

Many women in Mazouma’s farmers’ group have benefited economically from their work with P4P. Despite this, while over 50% of the UPPA Houet’s members are women, only 32% of the farmers’ organization’s sales to WFP were supplied by women, putting just 22% of the union’s sales directly into women’s hands. The five-year pilot illustrated that progress has been made, however continued efforts are required to ensure that more women benefit economically from their work with P4P.

 

Future plans

 

When asked about the future of her cooperative, Mazouma says, “from the very start P4P has been a school where we have learned how to improve our work, how to improve quality. I think we need more training, so women can help women train each other and develop their work.”

 

Though women such as Mazouma have received benefits from their participation in P4P, there is still is a long way to go. Change at a community and household level is slow, and many of the deep-seated cultural and social challenges identified at the beginning of the project have still not been completely overcome. However, the progress made so far is an indicator of the potential impact of culturally specific, flexible and nuanced gender programming.

 

“A great deal of work still needs to be done for gender equity to be fully realized,” says WFP gender advisor Veronique Sainte-Luce. “But P4P has been identified as something valuable, something positive, which has made a difference in women’s lives.”

 

For more information go to www.wfp.org/purchase-progress

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Little Boy Plays Again As WFP Works To Rebuild Lives In Northern Mali

By World Food Program

After three weeks of nutritious food, Souleymane's health
improved. Credit: WFP / Daouda Guirou

As displaced people and refugees start to voluntarily return to northern Mali, the World Food Programme is scaling up its operations to help rebuild livelihoods while also responding to immediate food and nutritional needs. Saouda Salihou, who returned to Gao with her young family, explains why this assistance is vital.

 

GAO - Sitting in front of her straw hut, Saouda Salihou proudly watches her two-year-old son Souleymane as he plays with his ‘toy cars’ – two tin cans attached to a length of rope. The toddler mischievously teases his older brother as he plays. Salihou, 27, can hardly believe this joyful, healthy child is the same boy she brought to a health clinic just three weeks ago.

 

During that visit to Gao’s health centre, Souleymane was diagnosed with moderate acute malnutrition. Nurses had weighed him and measured his mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC) - a quick method to assess nutritional status.

 

Salihou was given Plumpy’Sup, a ready-to-use nutritional supplement delivered to health centres in Gao by WFP, in partnership with Action Against Hunger.

 

“After I started giving the product to my child, he quickly gained weight,” said Salihou. “The following week, I was amongst the first people to arrive at the health centre for my child’s medical appointment."

 

These weekly appointments allow health agents to monitor vulnerable children’s nutritional status. Mothers also receive information on nutrition, and are given cooking demonstrations, using local products like peanuts, millet and maize.

 

Salihou attended many of these cookery classes, but said she often did not have enough money to cook the nutritious meals she was shown.

 

She is not alone. In northern Mali, three out of four households are food insecure and heavily reliant on food assistance, according to the results of a joint survey carried out by WFP and the government of Mali in September this year.

 

Salihou returned to Gao in mid-October after spending around 18 months in the capital Bamako following her family’s flight from the conflict that gripped northern Mali. But her husband was unable to return to Gao with her as they could not afford the transport fees.

 

He sends a little money to the family, and Salihou uses this to buy and resell condiments in Gao market. But the little she earns is never enough.

 

This is why WFP’s school meals programme in Gao is so important. One of the reasons Salihou returned was to send her children to school in their home region.

 

Her 10-year-old daughter Alima is now enrolled, and was delighted to rediscover her old friends in the classroom. She also enjoys a hot meal of enriched porridge every morning and another hot meal at midday.

 

“I have struggled to feed my children since I returned and it’s a real relief for me that Alima is getting food at school. She is also very motivated to go to school,” said Salihou.

 

WFP provides school meals to around 120,000 children in 576 schools in northern Mali. As more schools reopen, WFP is expanding this programme. WFP is also extending its malnutrition prevention and treatment in areas where health centres have started to function again.

 

“WFP is scaling up its operations and requires more funding,” said Sally Haydock, WFP’s Representative in Mali.

 

“The drought and subsequent food crisis in 2012, combined with the protracted security crisis have made it very difficult for the most vulnerable people to rebuild their lives. They will require food assistance throughout 2013 and into 2014,” she said.

 

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Change Through Cowpeas: In Mali, WFP Empowers Women Farmers

 

By World Food Program (WFP)

As the world’s largest humanitarian agency, the World Food Programme (WFP) uses its procurement needs to boost agriculture indeveloping nations through its Purchase for Progress (P4P) programmes. In the village of Logo in Mali, WFP and its partners have helped women farmers improve yields in the fields, while also enriching their children’s diets.

 

LOGO – On a sandy plain below Mali’s majestic Bandiagara cliffs, Awa Tessougué describes how she and a group of women farmers reshaped agriculture in their village, putting money in their pockets and improving their children’s nutrition in the process.

 

“In the beginning, my husband was sceptical about the project. Now, not only has he given me a larger plot of land so that I can grow more niebe (cowpea), but he also allows me to sell the family’s millet surplus to WFP,” she said.

 

Traditionally women in this region were denied access to land unless their husbands, who tended to cultivate millet for use in the home, consented. Some women were given tiny plots of land to grow crops for sale to cover some household expenses.

 

Awa Tessougué was among a small group of women whose husbands or male relatives gave them small parcels of land on which they grew niebe, a type of cowpea that is rich in protein, for sale in local markets.

 

WFP, through its P4P initiative, recognised the challenges facing these women as they attempted to move from subsistence farming to larger scale production of crops for sale, and started to work with them in 2009.

 

Acting with partners, including Catholic Relief Services and the Government of Mali’s local agricultural division, WFP taught the women how to increase production and also provided more resilient and high-yielding niebe seeds.

 

Thanks to these efforts, the women of Logo steadily increased their sales of surplus niebe, from one metric ton in 2011 (valued at approximately US$700) to 14 metric tons (with an approximate value of US$13,500) in 2013.

 

“Holistic” benefits

 

Yapè Tessougué, president of the Logo women farmers’ organization, says the village chief, who once fiercely opposed the project,is now very supportive.

 

“He has given 200 hectares of farming land to our organisation for niebe and millet production. He also offered a portion a land on which WFP built a warehouse to store our stocks,” she said. Awa Tessougué says that she can now pay her four children’s school fees, and is not dependent on her husband for all her needs.

 

“I even give my children a small amount of money to buy snacks during their break (at school) and I’ve noticed that they are now more motivated to go to school,” she said. WFP and its partners have also educated the women of Logo on the benefits of consuming the nutrient- and protein-rich niebe, which in the past was almost exclusively grown for sale.

 

Today, more and more women are using niebe in their own homes, and they say this has helped reduce child malnutrition rates in the village. “My children are less often ill and look healthier since they started eating more niebe,” said Binta Dramé, another farmer and mother-of-six. “The P4P project in Mali is very holistic as it brings together key aspects of development, such as nutrition, capacity building and gender empowerment,” said Ken Davies, the Global P4P Coordinator after he visited Logo in late September.

 

“While WFP is currently mainstreaming the best aspects of P4P into its overall Country Programme in Mali, I am glad to see the strong engagement from the Government at all levels”.

For more go to www.wfp.org
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Kids Head Back To School In Timbuktu

By World Food Program

Children are headed back to school in the desert city of Timbuktu as life gets back to normal after conflict in northern Mali. The promise of a daily, nutritious meal helps to fill the classrooms, particularly among girls, who might not otherwise be allowed to come. The fighting left northern Mali exposed to widespread malnutrition, a problem which food assistance programmes like school meals can help to address.

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 In Mbera camp, Zeinabou dreams of returning home to rebuild

 

By the World Food Program

Zeinabou, a mother of eight, fled with her family from conflict in her native Mali in January. There were rumours that a plane would come and bomb her town. She did not wait to see whether they were true; the family rented a car and fled to south eastern Mauritania. But life in the Mbera refugee camp is hard, she is pregnant and would like to return home, so her child can be born there.

 

In Léré, where she came from, Zeinabou ran a small business and a hairdressing salon. But when they fled, she and her children had just a few possessions. “We arrived at the border town of Fassala where we stayed for six days without any form of assistance until we were transferred to the camp of M’bera thanks to a convoy organized by UNHCR.

 

“I was lucky in that I already knew people in the camp at Mbera, who could help me out when I arrived. Their support was invaluable in the first weeks in precarious conditions before I received my tent," she said. WFP is providing food assistance for around 72,000 Malians at the M’bera camp. As well as the monthly rations, special nutritious foods are being provided for those who need it most, pregnant and nursing mothers and young children.

 

“Conditions in the camp are difficult. We don’t have access to many food products like meat and milk, the water points are far away and it is often expensive to carry the water to the tent. Often we have to pay a donkey cart because each water tank is 20 litres and too heavy to carry on your head, but the cart charges you 10 ouguiyas per tank.

 

A joint assessment in the camp in May by the UN agency for refugees (UNHCR) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) found that many residents were fearful of returning home. It identified the urgent need to go beyond immediate life-saving assistance in an effort to help refugees become more self- reliant.

 

In a small way, Zeinabou is trying to do just that. To complement the food ration provided by WFP with other with missing food products, she makes donuts and sauce condiments and sells them next to her tent.

 

M’bera is located in Hodh el Chargi, one of Mauritania’s poorest regions, where 14 percent of local residents are food insecure. In addition to providing support to the refugees, WFP is providing assistance to host communities in villages surrounding M’bera. There are few employment or trade opportunities, so displaced people struggle to be self-sufficient.

 

I am ready to go back as I am weary of the situation in the camp. In Léré I have a house and a field and I don’t know what has happened to them. My field will die if I don’t go back. I want to go back to give birth there, settle and rebuild my life.”

For more go to www.wfp.org
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Good news from the front lines of hunger

Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of the World Food Programme

 The past year – my first as Executive Director of the World Food Programme – has vanished in a blur.  The unfolding crisis in Syria and neighbouring countries has kept all of us in the humanitarian community busy, but for me, it is the continuing crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa that has provided a constant backbeat to my first twelve months in this job.

I chose Niger as the first country I visited as Executive Director in April last year.  At the time, the country was at the epicentre of a drought that had affected the whole Sahel region, pushing millions into the protective arms of the humanitarian community.   Hunger gnawed at the very soul of people caught in the unforgiving lean season that precedes the arrival of crops from the new harvest.

Twelve months later, when I visited Burkina Faso and Mali, millions were still facing the prospect of the next hunger season.  But this time they were better equipped to cope, even though the simmering conflict in Mali had complicated matters by forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. 

In 2012, humanitarian agencies and national governments worked together to avert a potential catastrophe.  In 2013 we are helping those same communities continue on the road to recovery as they adapt to shifts in weather patterns that have made droughts more frequent and more severe.

This is all good news.  Lives have been saved and money has been invested in building resilience, ensuring the people of the Sahel are better equipped to cope with future droughts.  But does good news get the attention it deserves?

Blink and you would have missed any news coverage of the successful early intervention that prevented disaster in the Sahel in 2012. This year, the Sahel has barely registered on the news media radar.  I may have missed it, but I don’t recall seeing any coverage of the healthy babies I saw in Mopti, Mali when I visited a few weeks ago.

Good humanitarian stories, it seems, are not worthy subject matter for newspaper headlines or top billing on television news channels, even when the lives of millions are at stake and tax-payers’ money is being used efficiently to provide vital assistance.

It’s not so long ago that a television report featuring harrowing images of a starving child would open the floodgates of support, compelling governments and the public to respond, donating the cash that humanitarian agencies need to stop more children going hungry.  It is a formula that has worked again and again since the first televised famine in Ethiopia in 1984, and it has been difficult for humanitarian organisations to resist.

At some point or other, we have all been complicit in identifying a “poster child” to tug on the heartstrings of the public and encourage them to reach for their wallets.  But while this may have worked in the past, it is becoming increasingly obvious that people have seen and read enough about food shortages and famine to acquire a more questioning approach to the causes of hunger and the potential solutions.

Today, potential supporters are more likely to ask why after so much work has been done, are children still starving?  And what has been achieved after all the millions of dollars have been spent, when so many people are still vulnerable to hunger?  As humanitarian agencies we must answer these questions  ourselves, but we also depend on media organisations to help us deliver the message explaining the rationale behind our response as well as to highlight success when it is deserved.

Of course we don’t work for each other, but media organisations and humanitarian agencies do depend heavily on each other’s goodwill.  We support each other as we strive to fulfil our different missions, finding ourselves accidental partners at the scene of every disaster.

The Sahel in 2012 was no Biafra, nor was it Ethiopia in 1984, or Somalia in 2011.  But human suffering – that image of a severely malnourished child - should not be the measure of whether a story merits news coverage.  Our role in the humanitarian sector must be to inspire journalists to move beyond reporting that is driven primarily by images that exemplify our collective failure.  If it takes television footage of a starving child to move a donor into action then we are acting too late.

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UNHCR urgently needs funding to continue assisting displaced Malians

By UNHCR

The UN refugee agency on Friday renewed an appeal for millions of dollars to help meet the needs of tens of thousands of Malian refugees and almost 300,000 internally displaced people.

 

"UNHCR needs US$144 million to cover the basic protection and assistance needs. So far we have received only 32 per cent of this amount," spokesman Adrian Edwards told journalists in Geneva. "The financial requirements and activities presented in the Special Appeal are not additional to the ones approved by our Executive Committee in 2012 but reflect a reprioritization of UNHCR's budget based on the latest developments in the region," he added.

The funding UNHCR is seeking is to allow for expansion and construction of transit centres, provision of supplementary and therapeutic food, shelters and other relief items, and delivery of basic services such as health care, water and sanitation and education.

There are currently more than 175,000 Malian refugees in surrounding countries. This includes 75,850 refugees in Mauritania, over 49,000 in Burkina Faso and some 50,000 in Niger. "The special appeal we are issuing today covers the needs of this population plus up to 45,500 additional refugees anticipated during 2013 – based on existing rates of arrival," Edwards said.

In addition to the refugee population there are more than 282,000 internally displaced people (IDP). Funding for them is also urgently needed. UNHCR leads efforts to coordinate activities of the protection and shelter clusters.

Displacement from Mali into neighbouring countries is continuing. More than 35,000 people have become refugees since the French military intervention in January (and, according to UN figures, there are an additional 60,000 IDPs).





Malian refugee children take shelter from a dust storm in Burkina Faso's
Goudebou refugee camp. The needs for displaced Malians
remain great.
© UNHCR/B.Sokol



"According to our staff on the ground, many recent arrivals are in worse condition than the refugees who arrived last year, requiring immediate relief and attention. The humanitarian situation is also being aggravated by prevailing food insecurity as a result of ongoing drought and a series of crop failures affecting the entire Sahel region," Edwards said.

In Mauritania – which hosts the largest number of Malian refugees – at the end of last year there were more than 54,000 Malians. The military intervention in northern Mali prompted a new influx of refugees, with an average of 500 new arrivals per day during January and February – amounting to more than 21,000 people. People are continuing to arrive, but in smaller numbers.

The new influx requires an expanded response in life-saving sectors, including in food and non-food items, water, sanitation, nutrition, health, education, shelter and environmental areas.

Several measures have been taken to treat and prevent malnutrition at the Mbera refugee camp, including distribution of nutritional supplements to infants, organization of awareness sessions for mothers, increased access to health facilities, launch of a measles vaccination campaign and installation of better water and sanitation infrastructure. This has led to a reduction in acute malnutrition rates of refugee children (under five years) from 20 per cent to 13 per cent. Additional funding is required to improve prevention and response mechanisms.

In Niger, the latest wave of refugees (some 2,700) in the remote north in late March and early April is mainly composed of women and children, escaping the military operations in Kidal and Menaka on foot or donkey. Reception conditions are precarious, mainly owing to a lack of water and health facilities.

UNHCR and the World Food Programme have already provided them with food and emergency non-food items while also redeploying staff and resources to this isolated area. "A recent inter-agency survey to assess the feeding programmes shows positive results, but continued efforts are required to counter prevailing malnutrition in the four refugee camps of Niger," UNHCR's Edwards noted.

In Burkina Faso, the majority of the new arrivals have been settled in Goudebou camp, where a recent nutrition survey organized by UNHCR, WFP and the national health authorities showed an alarmingly high global acute malnutrition rate of 24.5 per cent. UNHCR and its partners have completed screening of all children under five years of age and have started treatment of malnutrition cases.

Preparation is under way for blanket feeding programmes, including fortified cereals and micro-nutrient powder for children under five years and supplements or fortified blended food to all pregnant and lactating women.

One of the main protection priorities in Burkina Faso and Niger is to relocate refugees away from the formal and informal sites that are too close to the border or to military installations.

 

For more go to www.unhcr.org

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WFP working to bring urgently-needed food to northern Mali as food security worsens 

By the World Food Program

 

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is urgently working with partner organizations to reach families in northern Mali whose access to food has been reduced by the on-going conflict and is expected to worsen with the oncoming lean season, from April to June.

 

“I was able to go to Timbuktu last week and see how critical the humanitarian situation really is,” said Sally Haydock, WFP Country Director in Mali. “The areas around Timbuktu are unsecured and difficult to access, markets are not functioning properly, foods prices are high, fuel prices are high, and there is a lack of liquidity, which means that people are not able to buy the basic necessities.”

 

In the northern regions of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal, one household out of five faces extreme food shortages, with a significant deterioration of household food consumption in over the past weeks, according to recent analysis by the humanitarian community.

 

WFP is stepping up its efforts to transport food, both by road and river. Deliveries by road to Kidal resumed last week; with 24 trucks carrying 700 metric tons of food successfully reaching the region. 

 

Emergency school feeding is underway in 128 schools in Gao to assist 28,100 school children. Additionally, the school feeding programme has begun in Timbuktu this month in 76 schools.

 

In April, WFP is planning to provide food assistance to 145,000 people in Timbuktu; 86,700 in Gao; 34,500 in Kidal and 130,000 in Mopti, In other parts of the country WFP is planning to reach 37,000 vulnerable people in Ségou and 4,100 in Kayes.

 

Under its current emergency operation, WFP plans to support 564,000 people in Mali on a monthly basis, including about 360,000 in the North. WFP also plans to assist 163,000 Malian refugees on a monthly basis in Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger.

 

WFP operations in Mali and neighbouring countries require around US$312 million. The overall shortfall is US$159 million. The operation is currently 51 per cent funded.

 

For more visit www.wfp.org
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Video: The Human Chain in the Sahel

 

By ECHO & WFP

 

The Sahel has been hit by severe droughts three times in seven years. Normally it’s every 10 years. This documentary produced by Humanitarian Aid ECHO & World Food Programme, shows the triple crises challenges faced in the Sahel and how the population was assisted.

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Crisis in Mali disrupting schooling of 700,000 children

 

 By UN News Centre

The education of some 700,000 children in Mali has been disrupted due to the violence in the country, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said last week, adding that there is an urgent need to rebuild schools, train teachers and provide learning supplies.

A student writes on a chalkboard at a school in Bamako, Mali. Credit: UNICEF/Tanya Bindra

Northern Mali has been occupied by radical Islamists after fighting broke out in January 2012 between Government forces and Tuareg rebels. The conflict uprooted hundreds of thousands of people and prompted the Malian Government to request assistance from France to stop the military advance of extremist groups.

Since the violence began over a year ago, at least 115 schools in the north were closed, destroyed, looted and sometimes contaminated with unexploded ordnance. Of the 700,000 children affected, 200,000 still have no access to school, UNICEF said in a news release.

Many teachers were among those displaced and have not returned to the northern part of the country. Instead, they are working in the already overcrowded schools in the south, which cannot cope with the amount of displaced students from the north.

Photos:  WFP Responds to Emergency Food Needs in Mali

By WFP

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10 Things You Need To Know About Hunger In 2013

 

By WFP

How many hungry people are there in the world and is the number going  down? What effect does hunger have on children and what can we do to help them? Here is a list of 10 facts that go some way to explaining why hunger is the single biggest solvable problem facing the world today.

1. Approximately 870  million people in the world do not eat enough to be healthy. That means that one in every eight  people on Earth goes to bed hungry each night. (Source: FAO, 2012)

2.The number of people living with chronic hunger has declined by 130 million people over the past 20 years. For developing countries, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 23.2 to 14.9 percent over the period 1990–2010 (Source: FAO, 2012)

Credit: WFP

3. Most of the progress against hunger  was achieved before 2007/08. Since then, global progress in reducing hunger has slowed and levelled off.  (Source: FAO,  2012)

4. Hunger is number one on the list of the world’s top 10 health risks. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. (Source: UNAIDS, 2010; WHO, 2011).

5. A third of all deaths in children under the age of five in developing countries are linked to undernutrition. (Source: IGME, 2011)

6. The first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from pregnancy through age two, are the critical window in which to tackle undernutrition. A proper diet in this period can protect children from the mental and physical stunting that can result from malnutrition. (Source: IGME, 2011)


 7.  It costs just US $0.25 per day to provide a child with all of the vitamins and nutrients he or she needs to grow up healthy. (Source: WFP, 2011)

8.  If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, the number of hungry people could be reduced by 100-150 million. (Source: FAO, 2011)


9. By 2050, climate change and erratic weather patterns will have pushed another 24 million children into hunger. Almost half of these children will live in sub-Saharan Africa. (Source: WFP, 2009)

10. Hunger is the single biggest solvable problem facing the world today. Here are eight effective strategies for fighting hunger. Learn More

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Mali: Boats Take Food To Families Fleeing Fighting

 

By WFP

 

 Click on the picture to watch the video

 

Conflict in the north has forced thousands of families to flee their homes, uprooting half a million people. It's placing added pressure on vulnerable host communities who have not yet recovered from the Sahel drought. The conflict and population movement also complicates matters for agencies like WFP providing humanitarian assistance. WFP is sailing boats up the River Niger in order to bring food to families affected by fighting.

SAHEL: Malnourished to remain above one million in 2013

 By IRIN, Dakar (Senegal)

 

Children in the Banemate village in Oullam district in Niger's Tillaberi region have been living on wild fruits since last year
© Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Despite good rains across much of the Sahel this year, 1.4 million children are expected to be malnourished - up from one million in 2012, according to the 2013 Sahel regional strategy.

The strategy, which calls on donors to provide US$1.6 billion of aid for 2013, says fewer people are expected to go hungry in 2013 - 10.3 million instead of 18.7 million in 2012.

Harvests across much of the Sahel were fairly good this year following more steady rains, but vulnerability remain as the 2012 crisis, on the back of crises in 2005 and 2010, left many families heavily indebted, with severely depleted assets, and with no seeds to plant.

Resilience in Simple Terms / La Résilience en Termes Simples

World Food Programme and resilience building in the Sahel

 By Corinne Stephenson, Communication Officer in WFP, Regional Office

Resilience is a multi-faceted, long-term objective that includes access to basic services (education, health, water and sanitation), food and nutrition security, improved livelihood base and productive safety nets.  Resilience can only be achieved with leadership of the governments, ownership by the communities affected and in partnership with all UN actors, donors and non-governmental organizations.   

WFP’s presence in vulnerable areas, its understanding of vulnerability, focus on community participation and support to education – particularly that of girls – makes the organization a key player in the resilience agenda.  We can inform policy-making by governments, work with communities through food- and cash-for-work to build durable assets (improve land and water conservation, for example) and work with partners to give the projects the technical rigor necessary to have a lasting effect on the lives and livelihoods of people we serve. 

Resilience Niger- CREDIT: Rein Skullerud

What are the principles for action to build resilience? Read more

Resilience: New Wine In Old Bottles?

Interview by Caroline Hurford, WFP

The term resilience has entered the aid lexicon. But is it just “new wine in old bottles”? Haven’t aid agencies already been seeking to build resilience among beneficiaries for decades?  To find out, we spoke to David Gressly, who was appointed Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for Sahel earlier this year.


  Download interview with David Gressly

David Gressly. CREDIT: UNOCHA

 Follow on twitter @WFP @WFPAfrica @CarolineHurford

World Food Day in the Sahel: a picture is worth a thousand words!

Journée  Mondiale de l´alimentation au Sahel: Une photo vaut  mille mots!

 

CREDIT: WFP- Niger