Humanitarian food assistance in Malawi
The 2015-2016 drought was the worst in over 35 years, seeing farmers miss out on two consecutive rainy seasons. In April 2016, Malawi’s President Arthur Peter Mutharika declared this prolonged drought a national food insecurity crisis affecting nearly 3 million people. CPAR responded to the crisis by partnering with the World Food Programme (WFP) and our Canadian donors to distribute emergency food relief to over 113,000 people in over 20,000 households in Malawi’s Mzimba District. Priority was given to vulnerable populations including pregnant and breast-feeding women, the elderly, the chronically ill, and households headed by women, children or the elderly.
Project Goals
This project was designed to:
- To improve the food insecurity status of 20,653 households (113,594 people) to meet their missing food need through food response in Mzimba District for 3 months to zero thereby improving their food consumption by March, 2017.
- To improve nutritional status, knowledge, attitude and practices of 20,653 targeted households with special focus on pregnant and lactating women (PLW) and children under 2 through provision of fortified blends, nutrition related messaging and trainings on food preparations, food conservation / utilization and diet diversification.
- To improve asset base of 20,653 vulnerable populations (approximately 113, 594people) through provision of food support and of implementation of long term resilient building interventions.
Featured results
During the project’s three-month duration, CPAR has:
- Distributed over 3,000 tons of cereals, 600 tons of legumes, and 90 tons of vegetable oil Infants and pregnant and breast-feeding mothers received an additional 164 tons of nutritionally dense super cereals.
To help families mitigate the effects of future droughts CPAR provided:
- 5 tons of drought resistant corn seed.
- 116,200 drought tolerant cassava and sweet potato seedlings. The cassava and sweet potato seedlings are being multiplied by the recipients and will be distributed to neighbouring farmers in accordance with CPAR’s pay-it-forward principle.