One of WFP's goals in providing assistance to the hungry is to help them help themselves. Long-term programs like Food for Assets and Purchase for Progress are designed to create sustainable infrastructure and markets that can be maintained by local governments and communities. One community in Bolivia is already seeing success as part of WFP's sustainable school feeding project, which encourages local food production and helps ensure that local governments are the main providers of school meals.
The Sumaj Sara association, an association of farmers in the Tupiza province of Bolivia, has begun supplying nutritious food for local children as part of a school meals program. In the first school semester of 2009 alone, the seven-member association sold 134,000 servings of horchata, a maize-based drink, to the local government for its school meals program.
Maize in the city of Tupiza was traditionally produced for sale on the national market, but support from WFP has allowed the members of Sumaj Sara to set up and manage a maize processing plant that provides food for local people. Similar projects are taking place across Bolivia, creating new business connections between small-scale farmers and local authorities.
The success of the Sumaj Sara association is especially impressive given Bolivia's difficulties with poverty and hunger - two-thirds of the country's 9.5 million people live below the poverty line. Frequent natural disasters make agriculture an unreliable source of income, and 27 percent of Bolivian children under age 5 suffer from stunted growth. WFP's current country program for Bolivia aims to feed about 80,000 poor children each year.
-Alli BaileyCommunications Assistant
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