Tools for beating hunger

Scedhanna, 12, standing on a dried-up field in Amhara Region, Ethiopia. In September 2009 we launched an emergency appeal as a food crisis threatened 20 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

Children in the village of Jowhar, in Wajir District, north-east Kenya watch as the body of a two-year-old girl who died from malnutrition is laid to rest. Poor rains, declines in food stocks and rising food prices have left 10 million people without enough to eat in Kenya.

A child eating Plumpy'Nut at a therapeutic feeding centre in Warakaye Kebelle, Amhara region, Ethiopia.

Tasfa, 13, feeds her younger sister Shishig, 14 months, Plumpy’Nut at the same therapeutic feeding centre in Ethiopia. The centre is part of a community-managed acute malnutrition programme set up by the Ethiopian government, and implemented with Save the Children’s support.

“Hunger is what you see in the children on the BBC during a food crisis,” says Alex Rees, our Head of Hunger Reduction Policy. “It’s often transient, peaking at particular times of the year. Over time, repeated episodes of hunger become a major cause of malnutrition.

“Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, at least one child in three is malnourished. They eat very narrow diets, often only one type of food, and they don’t have enough on a persistent, daily basis. And it’s this that undermines children’s futures. They are ill more often, less successful in school and earn less as adults. Breaking the cycle of poverty starts with good nutrition.”

Pioneering work

In 2009 our pioneering work to provide cash payments to hungry families demonstrated in increasing numbers of countries that, where parents have money, their children eat a more diversified and nutritious diet. Our report, Lasting Benefits, set out the case for investing in cash transfers to improve the nutrition of mothers and children. In a review, the Lancet said that the effects of lifting families with young children out of poverty “will last for generations”.

In Ethiopia, we helped families feed their children nutritious diets through a combination of direct aid, cash payments and investing in people’s livelihoods. All told, our nutrition programmes in Ethiopia reached more than 71,000 people.

We also saw the start of an innovative £4 million European Community-funded programme in North East Province, Kenya, which has the potential to provide a new model of food aid. It will give at least 10,000 families vouchers that they can exchange for milk and meat produced by local pastoralists and sold by local traders. That way, child and family nutrition improves, and the local pastoral economy is boosted.

But we know we can never tackle malnutrition on our own. We need concerted government action. That’s why our advocacy success in 2009 were so important. Read about them here.