Saying ‘Enough is Enough’ to Global Hunger!

2023-12 Dec , Vision News 3 min read

What does it mean to have enough food?

Around 8 billion tonnes of food is produced a year, enough to nourish everyone on the planet.¹ But massive amounts of it are wasted without reaching those who need it most.

Indeed, millions of children aren’t wondering if they’ve had enough food today – they wonder if they’ll have anything to eat at all. Here are some sobering facts on hunger and malnutrition from 2022:

As many as 783 million people in the world faced hunger.²
2.4 billion people (nearly one-third of the world) did not have enough to eat.²
An estimated 45 million children suffered from wasting.³

The story of Ankita and her family is sadly typical:

The start of the dry season in Bangladesh is marked by less rainfall, but for 8-year-old Ankita it always signifies the drying up of her father’s work and the start of having less to eat.

Ankita’s father is the family’s only breadwinner and earns a living delivering goods. In the dry season, the work also dries up and Ankita’s mother Kobita has to borrow food from the neighbours.

Said Kobita, “Our family is in a very bad situation. Our purchases of daily necessities are affected by our limited earnings. We can’t provide for [our children’s] needs, because we struggle to get food.”

The problems Ankita and her family face aren’t isolated. After falling for years, the number of children dying from hunger is rising again, as food prices spiral and factors like conflict and climate change cause unequal food distribution. Without the right nutrition, children can’t learn or grow, and parents are struggling to provide for their families.

How World Vision ensures children have enough

Does this mean that global hunger is unsolvable? No!

At World Vision, we say “Enough is enough” to people going hungry. Through direct nutrition interventions and advocacy, we seek to ensure that children are getting the nourishing food they need to thrive and for families to be more resilient in the face of rising prices.

In 2022 alone, we achieved the following and more:

Every day, more than 150 caregivers learned how to grow vegetables and make nutritious meals.

Over 1,000 mothers’ groups taught mums what to feed their children to help them grow healthy.

More than 3,000 malnourished pregnant and nursing mothers joined a feeding programme to help them and their babies.

One of the key drivers of these successes is our Child Sponsorship programme. Through the community-focused solutions it supports, a hungry child gets fed every 60 seconds. Let’s check back in on Ankita after she became a sponsored child:

Through the Child Sponsorship Programme, Ankita and her family received ducks, giving them a source of food and income. “We can feed [the children] duck eggs. These help fulfil the nutrition needs of the children and our other family members too,” says Kobita.

Kobita is part of the local savings group and takes Ankita’s 5-year-old sister Ritika to the growth and monitoring programme to ensure she’s growing up healthy. Because of programmes like this, the majority of children in Ankita’s community are no longer malnourished, and their parents have learned how to ensure they grow up healthy.

Thanks to the loving support of our sponsors, there is enough food to go around for children and communities living in poverty. So, have you had enough of children going hungry? Be part of the solution – sponsor a child today! With enough people like you, we can put an end to child hunger.

Sponsor a child!

¹ World Wildlife Fund

² FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO (2023) The state of food security and nutrition in the world (SOFI) 2023

³ Joint child malnutrition estimates (JME) (2023) Levels and trends in child malnutrition