Lifesaving food assistance helps mothers thrive

Tuesday, August 23, 2022
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As a Christian, together with my children, we prayed to God and we got the food. This is a first for us to get such quantity of food. Now, we have two meals on our table per day.

Nyadiang Totjal

Even more than in other years, the majority of Foodgrains Bank funding commitments in 2021-22 were dedicated to respond to humanitarian crises emerging from conflicts around the globe. And while these violent conflicts rage, the numbers of people facing hunger continue to climb.

Our members and their local partners are committed to providing humanitarian assistance even in the midst of rising conflict, such as in South Sudan, for people like Nyachar Kueth Kang (pictured above).

Civil war with increasing attacks has left two-thirds of South Sudan with high food insecurity. Things have deteriorated in several regions that were hit with extreme flooding, COVID-19 and the persistent poor economic conditions.

Nyachar Kueth Kang is a 28-year-old mother of five. Her husband Kom Maluet is unemployed and because of a paperwork mix-up, the family was left sharing and borrowing food from her mother and neighbours.

Through megaphone announcements in Rubkona camp, Kang discovered Mennonite Central Committee Canada’s partner South Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (SSUDRA) was providing food assistance for the most vulnerable, internally displaced people. After registering with SSUDRA, she received sorghum, beans, cooking oil, salt and cash for milling flour. The food assistance was timely because Kang was pregnant: “It could’ve been difficult for me to survive with the child without the nutritional foodstuffs that I needed for strength and the child’s growth.”

Also in Rubkona, Nyadiang Totjal lost contact with her husband in one of the conflicts. She and her five children were left with no access to food, although sometimes she joined local women to forage in the forest for water lilies to eat, and firewood and reeds to sell. She used the money to buy food, but her family only ate once a day and malnutrition weakened their immune systems. Totjal was able to register with SSUDRA and the food assistance improved her family’s nutrition.

“As a Christian, together with my children, we prayed to God and we got the food,” she says. “This is a first for us to get such quantity of food. Now, we have two meals on our table per day.”

This story was featured in the 2022 Annual Report. Download or order your copy here.

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