World Food Programme

The World Food Programme (WFP; French: Programme Alimentaire Mondial; Italian: Programma Alimentare Mondiale; Spanish: Programa Mundial de Alimentos) is the food assistance branch of the United Nations and the world's largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security. On average, the WFP provides food to 90 million people per year, of whom 58 million are children. From its headquarters in Rome and more than 80 country offices around the world, the WFP works to help people who are unable to produce or obtain enough food for themselves and their families. It is a member of the United Nations Development Group and part of its Executive Committee.

Overview


The WFP was first established in 1961 after the 1960 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Conference, when George McGovern, director of the US Food for Peace Programmes, proposed establishing a multilateral food aid programme. The WFP was formally established in 1963 by the FAO and the United Nations General Assembly on a three-year experimental basis. In 1965, the programme was extended to a continuing basis.

Organization
The WFP is governed by an Executive Board which consists of representatives from 36 member states. Ertharin Cousin is the current Executive Director, appointed jointly by the UN Secretary General and the Director-General of the FAO for a five-year term. She heads the Secretariat of the WFP.

The European Union is a permanent observer in the WFP and, as a major donor, participates in the work of its Executive Board.

The WFP has a staff of 11,799 people (2011) with 90% operating in the field.

Goals and strategies
The WFP strives to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, with the ultimate goal in mind of eliminating the need for food aid itself.

The objectives that the WFP hopes to achieve are to:
 * 1) "Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies"
 * 2) "Support food security and nutrition and (re)build livelihoods in fragile settings and following emergencies"
 * 3) "Reduce risk and enable people, communities and countries to meet their own food and nutrition needs"
 * 4) "Reduce undernutrition and break the intergenerational cycle of hunger"

WFP food aid is also directed to fight micronutrient deficiencies, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and combat disease, including HIV and AIDS. Food-for-work programmes help promote environmental and economic stability and agricultural production.

Activities
In 2011, the 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, 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.

The 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, the 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, the 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 the WFP and partners in improved agricultural production, post-harvest handling, quality assurance, group marketing, agricultural finance and contracting with the WFP. More than 207,000 metric tons of food valued at US$75.6 million have been contracted.

The 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 only to women as experience built up over almost 5 decades of working in emergency situations has demonstrated that giving food only 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.

Funding
The WFP operations are funded by voluntary donations from world governments, corporations and private donors. The organization's administrative costs are only seven percent—one of the lowest and best among aid agencies. In 2011, the WFP's total revenue was $3.73 billion. From 2008-2012, private donors donated around $500 million.

FITTEST
The Fast Information Technology and Telecommunications Emergency and Support Team ("FITTEST") is a group of technical specialists within the IT division of the WFP. FITTEST provides IT, telecommunications and electricity infrastructure to support humanitarian aid operations anywhere in the world.

Humanitarian emergencies demand rapid interventions that are efficient, coordinated and effective. FITTEST responds to emergency requests and ensures staff are on the ground and ready to operate within 48 hours.

FITTEST is based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, headed by its Chief Officer Greg Vanny. The geographical location of this city facilitates the team’s deployment to emergencies around the world.

Operating on a cost-recovery basis, FITTEST is a unique cell within the United Nations system. Receiving no direct contribution from Governments or other humanitarian donors, FITTEST ensures its sustainability by operating in a similar way to a commercial company. The team operates on a limited margin (7.5%) which it uses to cover costs and initial training for its members. Such a method of operating ensures the application of very high service standards as FITTEST only survives if its 'clients' continue to utilise its services.

Official partners
The WFP coordinates and cooperates with a number of official partners in emergencies and development projects. These partners include national government agencies such as DFID, ECHO, EuropeAid, USAID; UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); non-governmental organizations such as Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services and Norwegian Refugee Council; as well as corporate partners such as TNT N.V., YUM! Brands, DSM N.V., and Cargill.

Actor Drew Barrymore is Ambassador to the World Food Program and donated $1 million in 2008.

Grassroots level partners include hungrykids.org.

World Hunger Relief Week
In 2007, the WFP joined with Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company, to launch the first annual World Hunger Relief Week, a global campaign to increase awareness about hunger, engage volunteers, and raise critically needed funds to help the WFP serve the world's areas of greatest need. World Hunger Relief Week 2007 leveraged the power of nearly 35,000 restaurants around the world, sparking a global movement to end hunger and generating an overwhelming outpouring of support from millions of customers, employees, franchisees and their families. Nearly one million Yum!, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver's and A&W All American Food employees, franchisees and their families volunteered close to 4 million hours to aid hunger relief efforts in communities worldwide, while helping to raise $16 million throughout the World Hunger Relief Week initiative for the World Food Programme and other hunger relief agencies around the world. The initiative has been repeated every year since.

Grassroots efforts
In 2004, the WFP tasked Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama with heading the first student-led War on Hunger effort, after a 2002 Northwestern University pilot. Auburn founded the Committee of 19, which has not only led campus and community hunger awareness events but also developed a War on Hunger model for use on campuses across the country.

The WFP has launched a global advocacy and fundraising event called Walk the World. On one single day each year, hundreds of thousands of people in every time zone all over the world walk to call for the end of child hunger. In 2005, more than 200,000 people walked in 296 locations. In 2006, there were 760,000 participants in 118 countries all over the world. This event is part of the campaign to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, specifically to halve the number of people who suffer from hunger and poverty by 2015.

A growing number of grassroots global events and celebrations such as International Day of Peace, World Party Day participants, and Peace One Day recommend the WFP on radio broadcasts as an immediate reach out action, putting help within reach of anyone with the information that a quarter feeds a child for a day. Fill the Cup campaign takes just 25 US cents to fill one of the "red cups" that the World Food Programme uses to give hungry children a regular school meal of porridge, rice or beans. Christina Aguilera, Drew Barrymore and Sean Penn are among notable celebrities who endorse the WFP. The British singer Sami Yusuf joined with the WFP to support the drought-stricken in Horn of Africa. through his personal campaigned, LiveFeedAfrica. His latest music video, Forgotten Promises, featured WFP work in the Horn of Africa.

World Food Program USA
The World Food Program USA, formerly Friends of WFP, works to solve global hunger, building a world where everyone has the food and nutrition needed to lead healthy, productive lives. WFP USA raises support for these efforts in the United States by engaging individuals, organizations and businesses, shaping public policy and generating resources for WFP.

Criticism
Critics claim the World Food Programme to be harmful to the countries it tries to aid. Kenyan economist James Shikwati says in an interview with Der Spiegel: "aid to Africa does more harm than good". According to him, the food aid increases corruption as local politicians have the opportunity to steal some of the aid to bribe voters or to sell the aid in the black markets killing the local agriculture. He claims that the WFP people as an organisation "are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated". He suggests that WFP answers too easily to the calls of the corrupted governments, and supplies too much of food aid leading to reduction of the production of local farmers as "no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program".

List of executive directors
The following is a chronological list of those who have held the Executive Director of the World Food Programme position:


 * 1) Addeke Hendrik Boerma (May 1962 - December 1967)
 * 2) Sushil K. Dev (acting) (January 1968 - August 1968)
 * 3) Franciso Aquino (July 1968 - May 1976)
 * 4) Thomas C. M. Robinson (May 1976 - June 1977 acting; July 1977 - September 1977)
 * 5) Garson N. Vogel (October 1977 - April 1981)
 * 6) Bernardo de Azevedo Brito (acting) (May 1981 - February 1982)
 * 7) Juan Felipe Yriart (acting) (February 1982 - April 1982)
 * 8) James Ingram (April 1982 – April 1992)
 * 9) Catherine Bertini (April 1992 – April 2002)
 * 10) James T. Morris (April 2002 – April 2007)
 * 11) Josette Sheeran (April 2007 – April 2012)
 * 12) Ertharin Cousin (April 2012 – present)