Activities
In 2011, WFP reached 99.1 million people in 75 countries and provided 3.6 million tonnes of food, including nutritionally improved products such as Plumpy’sup and Plumpy’doz) and Supercereal Plus. The number of malnourished children who received special nutritional support in 2011 was over 11 million, up from 8.5 million in 2010. Some 23 million children received school meals or take-home rations. WFP has scaled up its use of cash and vouchers as food assistance tools. Some 4.4 million people received assistance through cash or voucher programmes in 2011. In 2011, WFP bought over 2.4 million metric tons of food, worth more than US$1.2 billion, in 87 countries. Of the 2.4 million metric tons of food, 71 per cent was purchased in developing countries, representing approximately US$870 million and more than 1.7 million metric tons.
Among its other activities, WFP is coordinating the five-year Purchase for Progress (P4P) pilot project. Launched in September 2008, P4P assists smallholder farmers by offering them opportunities to access agricultural markets and to become competitive players in the market place. The project is underway in 20 of the 21 planned countries and, since the launch, more than 116,000 farmers, warehouse operators and small & medium traders have received training from WFP and partners in improved agricultural production, post-harvest handling, quality assurance, group marketing, agricultural finance and contracting with WFP. More than 207,000 metric tons of food valued at US$75.6 million have been contracted.
WFP focuses its food assistance on those who are most vulnerable to hunger, which most frequently means women, children, the sick and the elderly. In fact, part of the response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake consisted of distributing food aid to women as experience built up over almost 5 decades of working in emergency situations has demonstrated that giving food to women helps to ensure that it is spread evenly among all household members. School-feeding and/or take home ration programmes in 71 countries help students focus on their studies and encourage parents to send their children, especially girls, to school.
Read more about this topic: World Food Programme
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—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)