Enjoy Rugby And Tackle Hunger At The Same Time

Are you a Rugby fan? Are you planning to watch this year’s Rugby World Cup? Even if you are not planning to watch, this message concerns you. With the Rugby World Cup ongoing in New Zealand, fans and followers of the sport are encouraged not only to cheer for their favorite teams but also to support the global campaign to end hunger. The ‘Tackle Hunger’ campaign is just one of several partnerships between the United Nations and different sports associations to eliminate hunger.

The campaign was launched in 2003 to finance World Food Program’s feeding programs and similar initiative around the world by using the ongoing world cup to generate more support for it. We have seen their presence in the last FIFA World Cup as well.

Various initiatives have already been taken to encourage Rugby followers to support the Tackle Hunger campaign such as, advertising boards at the stadium in New Zealand, program advertisements, and public service videos shown online, on television and in the stadium. The campaign is also using Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to reach out to rugby fans across the world and inspire them to donate to WFP initiatives, particularly those focused on helping famine and drought victims in East Africa. The Rugby World Cup Twitter account has more than 104,000 followers while its Facebook profile has at least 1.4 million.

The Rugby World Cup is the third-biggest sporting event in the world, after the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup. It has an estimated TV audience of 4 billion people globally. It will be a huge success for the initiative even if only half of the Rugby fans show their support for world hunger reduction.

-Nisha Noor

SOURCE: DEVEX

R4: Rural Resistance

The new partnership between the World Food Programme, Oxfam, and Swiss Re has developed the R4 initiative with the idea in mind that it's cheaper to manage risks now for small-time farmers then to deal with crisis in the future. Due to factors including climate change, growing seasons are affected, farmers are unable to yield crops, which in turn creates more poverty and less food; a nasty circle indeed. With R4: Rural Resistance, weather insurance is provided to farmers in case they have an unsuccessful harvest and allows them to bounce back from a bad season and protects them from future bad seasons. "Rural resistance--it just makes sense."

-Chelsey Dambro

Source: World Food Programme

Increased Emergency Food Aid For Displaced Somali People

As a result of two decades of conflict and drought, it's estimated that nearly 2.4 million people, or 32 percent of the entire population (7.2 million), are in need of aid assistance and relief in Somalia. Luckily, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) is trying to help as many of these affected people as it can. This week, the WFP and its partners have promised further emergency help to 50,000 people in the capital city of Mogadishu, who are suffering from critical shortages of food. The food aid is made up mostly of high energy biscuits, packed with essential vitamins and minerals. Currently, the WFP and its partners are in the process of opening up new centers in refugee camps where internally displaced people can receive cooked meals. These new centers along with ones already in place are feeding 85,000 people a day, with hopes of reaching even more displaced Somalis in the coming months.

- Brock McNairy

SOURCE: UN News Centre

WFP Announces Record Food Purchases

Last Friday, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN agency in charge of fighting hunger, made an encouraging announcement: of the US$ 1.25 billion procured in food commodities, more than 80 percent came from developing countries including Viet Nam, Guatemala and Ethiopia. The food has been used this year to provide nutritional aid for the people affected by the Haiti earthquake, the severe drought in the Sahel region, the Pakistan flooding and the long-lasting situation in Somalia.

WFP is on of the World's largest food buyers. This means that when buying from developing countries, the WFP not only purchases food to be delivered to those who need it the most, but also invests inin the agricultural economies and boosts the economy and trade of developing countries. This has especial importance nowadays with record food prices that, combined with environmental or human-made disasters, are behind severe alimentary crisis, particularly in Africa.

This change in the food suppliers, combined with other improvements and innovations such as growing donor quotas, new purchasing mechanisms and new "hunger tools," allow the WFP to acquire food stocks in bulk with enough anticipation and at lower prices. This saves money, delivery time... and lives.

- David Nebreda

SOURCE: World Food Programme