The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has donated $1 million worth of food to the United Nations World Food Program to support the group's emergency response in southern Africa.
The LDS Church announced a donation of 2,491 metric tons of maize Tuesday morning to the U.N. effort.
"This significant contribution comes at such an important time, when millions of people are facing more and more hunger each day, and some are barely surviving," said James Morris, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program in New York..
He also said this is a most welcome donation to WFP from the Utah-based church, which has a history of responding to humanitarian crises worldwide. Since Morris took up his position with WFP three months ago, donations from a wide range of charitable and other non-governmental organizations have been strongly encouraged as a means of addressing a global trend of declining food aid resources.
"Wherever there are people who suffer, wherever there are people who face hunger, we are anxious to reach out to them and help them where and when we can," said Harold Brown, managing director of the church's Welfare Department. "To this end, the church will help purchase food for the millions of hungry in southern Africa. We are grateful to be partners with the World Food Program, an organization in a position to help where help is needed."
In June, members of the church gathered in Salt Lake City — as Utah battled with its own drought — to assemble and send 6,750 emergency food boxes for families in southern Africa. Four large containers of clothing and 450 tons of maize and beans are being purchased for Malawi.
Representatives from the church have been very active participants in non-governmental organization (NGO) coordination meetings, hosted regularly by WFP in Johannesburg, where issues on food aid and the wider humanitarian implications of the crisis are discussed.
So far, WFP has received about one-quarter of its $507 million appeal in the United States to feed 10.2 million people until March 2003. The agency has been urging for sufficient food to feed people in the region for July and August, as well as to preposition 320,000 tons of food stocks before the onset of the rainy season in October, when many communities will be rendered inaccessible.
WFP's appeal is part of the larger United Nations consolidated appeal for the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa, which totaled $611 million in food and other life-sustaining support. The appeal was launched last week in New York, when the U.N. secretary general appointed Morris as his special envoy on the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa.
"Many families are surviving on wild foods and the chaff of maize grain, which is normally used to feed livestock," Morris said. "Now, not later, is the time to respond before we see entire communities slip downwards to a point of tragic and inescapable death."
WFP is the United Nations' front-line agency in the fight against global hunger. In 2001, WFP fed more than 77 million people in 82 countries including most of the world's refugees and internally displaced people.
Established in 1963, WFP relies completely on voluntary contributions to finance its humanitarian and development projects.
WFP also has the lowest overhead of any U.N. Agency — on average 9 percent.
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