WFP assisted María Ereña and her family when they were displaced by severe flooding in Bolivia.
Emergency Operations deal with many different crisis situations which fit into three general categories: sudden disasters, slow onset disasters, and complex emergencies.  Sudden disasters refers to natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, or tsunamis.  Slow onset disasters includes crises such as drought and crop failure.  Complex emergencies are those that arise from conflict, and social and economic disruption.  Click here for more information.

In the last 20 years, the global number of natural disasters, wars and civil conflicts per year has doubled, demanding a significant portion of WFP’s funding and resources.  Friends of WFP gives donors the option of designating their gift to the general Disaster Relief program area, and also creates special program areas when disasters strike.  Program areas have been created for emergencies such as the 2004 tsunami, the ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, Cyclone Nargis which hit Myanmar/Burma, and the Haiti food crisis.

María Ereña: Bolivia Floods, 2007
Imagine a livelihood that stems entirely from the crops you grow on the land around your home.  With it, you are able to produce just enough to feed your four children, maintain your home, and build a modest collection of assets.  For María Ereña from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, this was the life she had built.  When the floods hit in late 2007, everything changed. 

María was a farmer until months of rainfall and devastating floods wiped out her crops and forced her to move her family from their home to a tent in an emergency camp.  She had no idea how she was going to provide for them; the flood had swept away her home, belongings and livelihood.

“Before the floods, we used to live in El Fortin community, but our house collapsed and our crops vanished,” she recalls. “Now, all that we have left fits inside this tent, where we have been living for the past [few] months.”

Fortunately, WFP was there to assist the Bolivian government in its emergency response efforts, distributing food to thousands of flood-affected families like María’s.

“Of all the aid received, food is probably the most important, especially for my four children,” she says. “They really like the Corn Soya Blend that WFP provided. I prepare soups and cakes…it is good food for my kids”.

María believes that food helped kept her family together.  Without WFP’s critical assistance, her family would have had to split apart in search of means of survival; instead they maintained the strength to work together and rebuild what they had tragically lost.

Food for Training programs help poor rural farmers build a future.
In the aftermath of complex crises and natural disasters, refugee and displaced populations must rebuild their lives; damage to food production and chronic malnutrition often persist for years.  WFP’s Relief and Rehabilitation projects help communities rebuild assets and long-term food production resources while assisting with immediate food needs.  Food for Work, Food for Training and Food for Education programs provide critical experience as well as daily food assistance for program participants.  Consequently, participants are able to provide a meal for their families during challenging transition periods, and also learn how to rebuild their local infrastructure, community and personal assets to establish self-sufficiency and buffer against future disasters.  Click here for more information.

Friends of WFP does its best to send donations designated for a specific country’s relief and rehabilitation programs to that country, but this cannot be guaranteed.  If we are unable to send donations to a particular country, they will be designated to the Greatest Need program area, which allows WFP to use assets where they are most needed at any given time.

Ismail Ibrahim: Niger Food for Work
Until recently, the dusty village of Karadji-Nord in the Tahoua region of Niger was slowly emptying. Every year, more and more of its young men migrated to the Ivory Coast, Mali or Libya in search of work, convinced that it was impossible to produce enough food at home to feed their families. But since WFP started a food-for-work project in the village, this has changed. Many are staying to be part of the agricultural effort and rehabilitate their parched land.

Ismail Ibrahim, 35, happily reports an increase in food production from 90 to 110 bushels of millet per field since he began working with WFP to dig water-retaining crescents in his fields.

“With this kind of improvement to our land, we will be able to produce much more food every year and look after our interests better. I’ve even seen places being cultivated now where we never thought that cultivation would be possible,” he says.

Food distributions both encourage people to stay to work their land, and help food stocks from the previous year last until the new harvest.  For the people of rural Niger, the projects take on an even deeper meaning.

“Food is not the only reason we are happy to do this work,” says Ibrahim. “We also do it because we know what it means for our future.”

Special Operations help WFP to streamline its work in particularly challenging areas.
WFP Special Operations are those that facilitate the movement and delivery of food assistance to those who need it most.  This includes projects like road rehabilitation, bridge building and road de-mining.  Special Operations also refers to the dispatch of special equipment and personnel to disaster and crisis areas, such as water purification systems in flood areas and travel services for aid workers in inaccessible or dangerous regions.  Click here for more information.

Special Operations projects arise on an as-needed basis and are often some of the shortest-term initiatives undertaken by WFP, as they are designed to relieve food aid bottlenecks and move resources as quickly as possible.  Consequently, designating your donation to Friends of WFP to Greatest Need is often the best way to help Special Operations, as it allows WFP the discretion to decide when and where funds are needed most at any given time. 

Southern Sudan Special Operations
After decades of civil conflict in Southern Sudan that drove many from their homes, extensive damage was caused to communities, infrastructure and resources. Fortunately In 2005, a peace agreement was reached.  As residents attempted to piece their lives back together, WFP personnel requested a Special Operations project to restore key roads in the region, knowing that this was imperative to ensuring the efficient delivery of food assistance.

The WFP Project Document reported that “for over 15 years, humanitarian aid has had to be largely delivered by air at huge cost due to the poor road infrastructure, lack of road maintenance and insecurity caused by civil war.”

The development of peace allowed for safer, more efficient movement of resources to populations in need, yet at the same time, peace raised a new set of transportation concerns for aid workers. 

“[With] the advent of peace and the cessation of hostilities… the road network faces a drastic jump in demand for services. This increase in demand results from the implementation of the peace agreement, leading to the movement of hundreds of thousands of Internally Displaced Persons and returnees, many of whom will require food assistance; demobilization of thousands of troops; new agencies and peace keeping operations entering Sudan; and increased operations by existing agencies. The current road network cannot meet these demands.”

In order to provide assistance to a dramatically rising number of beneficiaries during a challenging and fragile transition period, as well as support the continuation of the peace process, the repair of roadways was absolutely essential for WFP. Thanks to Special Operations, aid workers were better able to efficiently address the needs of the hungry poor of Southern Sudan.

School Meals programs in Kenya are vital for many children.
WFP’s Development Projects aim at breaking the cycle of poverty and hunger by helping the hungry poor invest in their futures and become self-reliant and self-sustaining.  Mother Child Health and Nutrition programs improve the nutritional intake of pregnant and nursing women and their young children, giving those children the opportunity for healthy development that will increase their educational capacity and work productivity throughout their lives.  WFP also runs nutritional support programs for those affected by HIV/AIDS, substantially improving their bodies’ ability to handle treatment.  School Meals programs offer students a nutritious meal during school, giving them the energy to focus on their studies and offering parents an incentive to keep their children enrolled.  Agricultural training and market and infrastructure education are key components of development projects as well, teaching people how to build sustainable livelihoods and protect themselves from natural disasters and crises. Click here for more information.

Friends of WFP has program areas available for two of WFP’s most widespread development projects: School Meals and Mother Child Health and Nutrition.  Through these initiatives, WFP helps communities invest in one of their most important assets-their children-and build toward a more secure future.

Winnie Adhiambo: Kenya School Meals
For 13-year-old Winnie Adhiambo in Nairobi, Kenya, school is a lifeline. Winnie is an orphan, living with her two brothers and one sister in Nairobi’s sprawling Kibera Gatwikira slum, one of the largest in the world. For all four siblings, the school lunch and take-home rations that the UN World Food Program (WFP) provides are vital. Winnie is in class six at Kicoshep Primary School, a local community-run institution in the slum. The simple but nutritious meals that the school gives to the schoolchildren come from WFP. 

Even with food, life is hard. Every morning and evening, Winnie walks almost one kilometer to and from school, along the mud paths and open ditch drains that thread through the slum’s closely packed houses. After school, she has household chores which include cleaning the house, cooking and fetching water for the family.  The four children live alone in one small room and struggle to pay the rent. They say their parents used to talk to them about a rural family home, but never visited, so that even if they do have any other relatives, they doubt they would know them.

“I don’t know what we would do without the food,” Winnie says. “Maybe we would be dead by now because we don’t have anywhere else to get food from. The food we get is our life.”