Did you know that 20 million slices of bread, 4.4 million potatoes, 3.1 million glasses of milk, 2 million eggs, and 0.9 million bananas are wasted every day in the UK (www.toogoodtogo.co.uk)?
And, yet a news report from April states that the World Food Program estimates that, due to COVID-19, about 25 million people are ‘forecast to be facing acute food security by the end of the year’ (www.guardian.com).
On one end of the scale, there is enormous food wastage and at the other end, there is a scale of unprecedented food insecurity. If ever there was a cause to support, it is the fair and equitable distribution of basic resources such as food.
So, what are humanitarian agencies like ADRA doing to combat food insecurity?
Yemen
Yemen is located to the northeast of Ethiopia and south of Saudi Arabia. The situation in that country is considered by many agencies as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world with more than ‘24 million people - some 80% of the population, in need of humanitarian assistance’ (www.unicef.org).
It is a storm within a storm. If you search the media, you will find videos and pictures of children rummaging through rubbish piles looking for food, and the human cost of the crisis has seen over 20 million people in need of securing food.
ADRA’s Integrated Cash Intervention (ICI) project aims to increase the food sectors in communities in Al-Jawf, Sana’a, Adhale’e, Abyan, and Aden through the provision of cash assistance to meet the basic food needs of 4,300 households in Yemen. Please continue to support ADRA-UK as it helps some of the world’s most struggling people.
For more information, please go to www.adra.org.uk.