THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME: THE FIRST 41 YEARS

Scheduled to go into operation in 1963 as a three-year experimental programme, WFP was up and running before it could walk.

An earthquake hit Iran in September 1962, followed by a hurricane in Thailand in October. Newly independent Algeria was resettling 5 million refugees.

Food aid was urgently needed and WFP
supplied it. It has never stopped.
WFP is the world's largest international food aid organisation combating hunger in underdeveloped nations with severe food shortages. The frontline stretches from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East to Latin America and Asia & the Pacific.

Whether refugees are fleeing war or drought is destroying farmland, hunger is often the first emergency. The hungry look to WFP for the first response. In 2005, the agency's food aid reached 73.1 million people caught in the world's ever-widening net of humanitarian disasters.


WFP is the United Nations frontline agency in the fight against global hunger. Operations aim to:

-- Save lives in refugee crises and other emergencies

-- Improve nutrition and quality of life of world's most vulnerable people at critical times in their lives

-- Enable development by (a) helping people build assets that benefit them directly; (b) promoting the self-reliance of poor people and communities


Over 90 percent of the world's hungry are prisoners of poverty. They are too poor to buy enough food. They spend all their time and energy trying to survive.

WFP's innovative food aid projects not only put food on the tables of the weakest and poorest: jobless mothers, school children, landless farmers and HIV orphans. They also help the hungry to secure food and an income by themselves, so they can break out of the poverty trap and build sustainable future.

How can you help?
Donations can be made in cash, food or services. Please drop by the website, and follow the link on the left side to find out how. For every US$10 donated to WFP, on average US$9 directly benefits the hungry. WFP has the lowest overheads of any UN Agency (on average 7%). WFP relies entirely on voluntary contributions to finance its humanitarian and development projects. None of the average 97 million people in more than 80 countries who eat WFP food each year could do so without the generosity of the donors. (gutxiago irakurri)

THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME: THE FIRST 41 YEARS

Scheduled to go into operation in 1963 as a three-year experimental programme, WFP was up and running before it could walk.

An earthquake hit Iran in September 1962, followed by a hurricane in Thailand in October. Newly independent Algeria was resettling 5 million refugees.

Food aid was urgently needed and WFP
supplied it. It has never stopped.
WFP is the world's largest international food aid organisation combating hunger in underdeveloped... (gehiago irakurri)