Tanzania, January 2013

The U.S. Ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Agencies in Rome, David Lane, has completed a one-week tour of WFP, FAO, IFAD and USAID projects throughout Tanzania. The trip gave him the chance to see firsthand how the U.S. government is working with WFP, IFAD, and FAO to support Tanzanian smallholder farmers, business, and the government in improving the food security situation for the country’s most vulnerable.

Top: Ambassador Lane talks with a District Government official while watching Masaai warriors dance at Arkatan Primary School, Monduli, Arusha, where WFP is providing school lunches to around 500 students.

Bottom left – After touring the warehouse rehabilitated through the Purchase for Progress initiative, Ambassador Lane meets the local farmers. Jikuzeni Kware SACCOS has over 600 members, 285 of whom are women. Each member cultivates between 0.5-3 hectares of land, primarily sunflowers, maize and beans.

 Bottom middle – Ambassador Lane helps out in the weekly food distribution in Sakila Village, where WFP is implementing a Food for Assets project. Food is distributed based on work done by community members on a contouring project, protecting some 200 hectares of land from degradation.

Bottom right – Ambassador Lane helps dish up a nutritious lunch of maize and pulses to students at Arkatan Primary School, Monduli, Arusha.

Photographs: WFP/Jen Kunz

Bangladesh, June 2011

Students who attend the Hat Sarutua Primary School in Sirajganj, Bangladesh. WFP is actively engaged with the government on safety net reforms and is piloting innovative food and cash-based safety nets, such as the Food Security for the Ultra poor (FSUP) project which helps 30,000 ultra-poor women by providing cash grants and training sessions. It also contributes indirectly towards education for girl children. One of the student’s (second from left) mother is an FSUP beneficiary. Prior to becoming a beneficiary, she could not afford education for her daughters. After investing and reinvesting the cash grant received from WFP now she is able to send her daughters to school. 

Photos: WFP/Amy Johansson

Ethiopia, Dolo Ado March 2012

Top:

Somali family at the Buramino camp, one of the five refugees camps forming Dolo Ado where, in total, live 146.000 people. Many families are fleeing due to lack of food in their homecountry, and to the conflict. 

Bottom left:

Meals in the refugee camp schools are provided through the school feeding programs, which are also managed by parents committee. Some of the teachers in Dolo Ado are refugees themselves, trained by humanitarian workers to work in emergency situations.

Bottom right:

Monthly rations of oil, to the refugee camp. A bar-coded ration card is given to each family, for food rations and other relief items. The ration card is a very important document in the camp. Women generally are the ones to go to the distribution centers.

Photos: WFP/Jiro Ose 

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson (right) speaks with primary school children in the town of Dolow south on the border with Ethiopia. On the left is WFP Deputy Country Director Salman Omer. The children receive a daily in-school snack from the World Food Programme (WFP), which hosted Jackson’s visit to Somalia and Kenya.  Jackson is donating to WFP money from the sales of a new energy drink, called Street King, as part of his public commitment to provide one billion meals for the hungry. For every unit sold, he has pledged to donate 10 U.S. cents, which covers the typical cost of food in a WFP meal.

 Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson also visited the WFP School Meal projects in the Kibera slums of Nairobi and helps serve WFP meals to the children in school.

A full stomach can mean the difference between completing an education and dropping out.  In the poorest districts of Lao PDR, WFP assists more than 152,000 primary school aged children by providing healthy mid-morning meals everyday. Daily nutritious meals in school not only help the children concentrate better in class, it also motivates them to attend school everyday. Click here for more on how they prepare WFP school meals in Lao PDR.