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 Yesterday at a lecture in Washington, D.C., husband-and-wife journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn introduced their new book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” The talk focused on empowering women as a means to break the cycle of poverty, with a particular emphasis on maternal health and maternal mortality. They hope people will “join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts.”
A review of the book in the Washington Post left me thinking about the role that women really can play in ending poverty. According to Carolyn See, “These Pulitzer Prize-winning authors see the treatment of women in developing countries as the great story of this century, a moral issue, sure, but also as an economic one. What if by oppressing half their population, countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have been shooting themselves in their collective foot?”
She goes on to say that “’Half the Sky’ is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, but also a call for volunteers. It asks us to open our eyes to this enormous humanitarian issue.”
WuDunn and Kristof were joined for the discussion by Aparajita Gogoi, National Coordinator of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood–India, and Jérémie Zoungrana, National Advisor of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood–Burkina Faso and Rwanda. While WuDunn and Kristof focused on the stories of women on the ground whom they interviewed for the book, Gogoi and Zoungrana provided examples of the societal barriers that make women’s empowerment a challenge in their countries. All participants talked about the need for both social and economic empowerment.
In both its emergency relief and development projects, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has a special commitment to helping women gain equal access to life's basic necessities. Inherited hunger, which causes undernourished mothers to give birth to malnourished children, is a major impediment to child development. Thus maternal undernutrition endangers mothers and children alike. This is why programs like WFP’s Maternal-and-Child Health and Nutrition program, which provides nutritional assistance to pregnant and nursing mothers, are so important.
In 2000, world leaders met at the U.N. Headquarters in New York to establish the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which must be met by 2015. WFP’s mandate for meeting MDG 1 (to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger) is obvious. But WFP's food assistance can also play an important role in realizing several more of the eight MDGs: empowering women, reducing child and maternal mortality and improving maternal health.
”Half the Sky” discusses how to accomplish MDGs 3 and 5. MDG 3 is simple: promote gender equality and empower women. MDG 5 focuses on improving maternal health. The World Bank has a section dedicated to the MDGs on its website, stating, “When a country educates its girls, its mortality rates usually fall, fertility rates decline, and the health and education prospects of the next generation improve.”
Programs like WFP’s can improve gender equality and strengthen the partnership between men and women, leading to more effective food security and ultimately breaking the cycle of poverty and hunger.
Watch the discussion with Kristof and WuDunn.
Read more about how WFP is empowering women around the globe.
Learn more about women, poverty and economics.
 The St. Catherine Laboure Medical Center in Cite Soleil, Haiti, has seen an increase in child undernutrition cases recently. There, you might find children who haven’t eaten in two to three days. In Haiti, acute undernourishment
among children under 5 years old is at 9 percent, and chronic undernourishment is at 24 percent. Currently, there are 19 children being treated for severe undernutrition at the medical center, which is run by the Haitian government and the Canadian nongovernment organization, Medecins du Monde. Many of these children’s mothers were reliant on the generosity of others to help provide food for their children, as well as dependent on remittances from their families or friends in the United States. As the United States’ economy is suffering from a global economic crisis, this in turn is affecting those in the developing world.
Cite Soleil has been hit especially hard, with a population of about 200,000 people. Many are finding it more difficult to feed their children, because their purchasing power has declined, while some food prices have remained high. As a result, the medical center says that it is likely that the number of acutely undernourished children needing medical care will increase. Pediatric nurse Francia Louverture said, “Almost every child who comes in for whatever reason is malnourished…Two or three years ago, that was not the case.”
View WFP operations in Haiti.
-Brian J. Ward
Outreach Associate
Friends of WFP
 This weekend, we will celebrate Mother’s Day, and as we do, we can take a moment to think about the millions of women across the world who do what they can to provide for their children and families with the brightest future possible. For some women, assistance from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) enables them to eat well during pregnancy so that their babies might be healthy. Other families welcome WFP’s help for schools, as they provide healthy meals to children in school. WFP is working to nourish and empower women to end the cycle of poverty.
The valuable role of women was one of the topics that Josette Sheeran, executive director of WFP, recently wrote about in a blog post for The Huffington Post. She reflected on her two years as executive director and made it clear that hunger can be solved. She outlined what she has learned about hunger and said, “I've learned that hunger can be chronic, creating a negative downward cycle where malnourished mothers – often little more than children themselves – have malnourished babies who must struggle from their first breath to even survive.”
However, she added that throughout her travels – from Haiti to Myanmar to Ghana, “I also learned that no parent ever wants to accept food assistance unless they have run out of options. And they will take that option.” Many enter WFP’s Food for Work/Food for Training programs, which offer food as payment for individuals to receive job training or for work building infrastructure, such as schools and roads. WFP also offers its new Purchase for Progress program, which gives small-scale farmers access to reliable markets and the opportunity to sell their surplus at competitive prices, while helping WFP provide locally purchased food to those most in need.
WFP places particular emphasis on the role of women in their community in reducing poverty and hunger. According to WFP’s “Focus on women” webpage, 8 out of 10 people engaged in farming in Africa are women, and 6 out of 10 in Asia. Also, women are the sole breadwinners in one out of every three households around the world. In addition, WFP increasingly turns to women in distributing food assistance after an emergency.
WFP is featuring four stories about women benefiting from their humanitarian assistance. The stories tell of varied situations in which women have been aided by WFP programs.
One story tells how, after families lost everything in the hurricanes in Haiti, women have come to rely on feeding centers as the country rebuilds. Another story details the situation in Niger, where families worry about getting through the lean season. (The lean season is the precarious few months as household food stocks run out and the new harvest begins, essentially causing families to go with less food between harvests.) In Niger, WFP responds with a cereal bank for families to stock up during this seasonal lag in food.
These WFP success stories of helping women around the world are one small example of how WFP is teaming up with women to better their health, their children’s nutrition and their community wellbeing.
-Jessica Alatorre
Outreach Associate
Friends of WFP
In early September 2008, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran traveled to Ghana to visit several WFP food assistance operations, which provide life-saving nutritional support to hundreds of hungry people. During her trip, Sheeran visited a WFP school meals program that served children under the age of five. This initiative provides healthy and nutritious found to hungry children who attend school in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Sheeran also visited maternal/child health programs, which are designed to improve the nutrition and health status of pregnant and nursing women and children under five. Similar to school meals, children between 2-5 years receive hot meals to help facilitate normal growth and physical development. Sheeran talked to WFP staff on site and helped distribute cups of porridge to children.
Through WFP food assistance programs, hundreds of women and children in Ghana can look forward to a healthier and brighter future.
Maria Reppas
Senior Communications Associate
Friends of WFP
 I've started this post half a dozen times and had to stop when my eyes were too blurry from tears. I think the most memorable experience of the trip to Nicaragua for me was the Mother & Child beneficiary visit. I met the same family Margot mentioned below, Olivia's family. Olivia is a single mother of three little boys and a baby girl, and she lives in a two-room house with her parents. The walls were made of leftover lumber, and you could easily see outside through the gaps. The roof rattled with every breeze. The dirt floor was uneven, and the only furniture was a couple of benches and a hammock. There was an ancient and faded baby walker hanging from one wall along with a few tools. With all of this, the tiny home was immaculate and well-tended.
When I first saw Olivia's daughter sleeping in a hammock, I assumed she was about 6-months old based on my daughter, Eva. The little girl was actually 15-months old and only 14 pounds. For a reference, Eva was almost 23 pounds at that age. The little girl soon woke up, but she was so quiet and listless. She hadn't started walking yet, and her arms and legs looked like there was very little muscle. Instead of a lusty cry, she just whimpered; Olivia tried unsuccessfully to nurse her. We all went into the family's only other room where she made a little cup of milk mixed with cereal for the baby.
My heart broke as I watched the little girl strain forward to reach the cup. Olivia gave her little sips of the mixture. She told us that she received rations for the baby because she was so undersized, but that it only lasted a fraction of the time it was supposed to because she divided it between all four children. I am ashamed to say my first thought was how could a mother give away the food that was meant for her baby? That only lasted a second, though, as I looked into the faces of her three beautiful little boys. They were also so tiny and undersized. Their eyes were huge and they held onto each other as they stared at the tall, strange-looking people invading their home. How could a mother look at those hungry little faces and not share the minuscule bit of food that was available? I can not imagine having to make such a decision. As her mother, Miriam, said, their life is hard. Through all of this, Olivia was gracious and strong. She did not complain once, and in fact told us how much she appreciated the assistance she received through Mother & Child. She said they would not have made it through the last year without it.
 Around that time, I had to walk out into the yard to catch my breath. I put on my sunglasses and smiled as broadly as I could to keep my chin from trembling. The little boys were in the yard, and one of them grabbed some rope that was dangling from the roof to do a flip. We cheered and clapped, and he gave me a shy smile. Another little boy quickly took his turn to do the same, and our group started clapping. Soon the boys were tussling a bit to each take a turn impressing us. It was amazing to see that in spite of their dire circumstances, they were just like little boys all over the world wanting to show off their strength and skills.
I have never felt quite so helpless. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the image of that little girl struggling to reach her cup. This beautiful family redefined many things for me: struggle, strength, want, need, courage. When I first read about the Mother & Child program, I thought it was a wonderful concept. Now, having seen the life and death difference it has made for a single family, in a single village, in one of hundreds of countries, the program has transformed in my mind from a lovely idea to a moral imperative.
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