United Nations Radio

Narrator: Africa remains the only region in the world where child mortality and undernourishment rates have increased. In order to address the growing threat of hunger, which is responsible for the death of three and a half million children worldwide each year, UN Programmes and NGOs are uniting in innovative and holistic ways. UN Radio's Chelsea Moore explains.

Moore: In response to the increasing challenge of hunger and malnutrition, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Millennium Villages Project have teamed up to reduce hunger and malnutrition across Africa. Jeffery Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General, believes the partnership will make good use of school meals, food-for-work and other WFP programmes that are already doing so much to end hunger and malnutrition.

Sachs: Our Goal is to use the powerful tools of the WFP, together in the Millennium Villages Project, so that these villages become under nutrition free. That chronic under nourishment can be eliminated through integrated strategies, which the Millennium Project champions, through the powerful tools of the WFP and through the partnership.

Moore: WFP's Executive Director Josette Sheeran told journalists that with hunger on the rise, ending hunger by the year 2015 is the most threatened Millennium Development Goal.

Sheeran: Today one out of every six human beings will wake up and not be sure how to find enough food for themselves. When over one billion people go to bed hungry and wake up hungry, and that number is increasing, it requires urgent action.

Moore: Sheeran said the new tactics being used by the Millennium Village Projects and WFP to meet the first MDG "are not your grandmother's food aid." By going beyond simply providing a cup of food, projects are addressing issues far beyond hunger.

Sheeran: If you put a de-worming pill in there you are actually feeding the child, not the worms and for the first time in their life they may be getting the vital nutrients. Today WFP is asking not just is the cup full, but what's in the cup. But perhaps most importantly with the cash that we receive, 80% of it is spent buying food from the developing world farmers themselves. And when you fill this cup with food from the farmers who are often completely cut off from markets, and don't have the chance to sell what they produce, it is a powerful solution to breaking the cycle of hunger.

Moore: Sachs announced plans to use the Millennium Villages as examples of the WFP's best practices, and models for future projects with plans of scaling up. Sachs discussed a recent visit to one of the Millennium Village sites in Crararo, Ethiopia where WFP food for work programs helped to build percolation ponds and check dams in order to capture rainfall in a dry area, bolstering food production and security.

Producer: Chelsea Moore
Duration: 2'50"