World Children Fund has fed more than 2000 hungry children a day living in some of Kenya’s largest, most notorious settlements and impoverished areas including Kibera, Makindu, Garissa and Kambi Teso. An estimated 60 percent of Nairobi’s population lives packed together in unplanned, underserved, densely populated settlements. These settlements are filled with sprawling small structures constructed from mud and corrugated metal. These urban settlements are notable for their lack of access to clean water, sanitation, and adequate housing. Families and children live without electricity or piped water. They use shared pit latrines or open areas and have no solid waste collection services.

These areas are rife with typhoid, cholera, malaria, sickness, disease and crime. The children live without flora or fauna. The maze of shanty's, uncollected garbage and waste leave little space for gardens, green trees or safe and clean play areas for children. In Kibera alone, more than a quarter of a million people are stacked in just two square kilometers. WCF feeding programs serve hot and nutritious meals to hungry children living in these neglected and underserved areas. For many of the children in these programs, it is their only meal of the day.

Some of the children in these WCF feeding programs comprise child-headed households, or they live with elderly grandparents or relatives who care for others. Other children who endure life in the settlements have parents but suffer from malnutrition due to chronic poverty. As is common with so with many of our feeding programs, children enrolled in the program often turn up with several siblings in tow, or a baby strapped to their backs. Despite being children themselves, they often bare responsibility for younger sisters and brothers, which means they are constantly on the lookout for food. In addition to nutritional intervention and food security, the children also benefit from regular contact with program staff that monitor their safety and health.

Together, we have infused hope in the lives of suffering children living in settlements throughout Kenya. Thank you to World Children’s Fund donors who have fed thousands of hungry children through life-saving nutritional feeding programs located in the poorest corners of the world.

A critical component of the World Children's Fund fulfillment model is providing nutritional meals to orphans and vulnerable children in educational settings. Receiving food at school eradicates hunger and malnutrition and promotes school enrollment and retention.

WCF programs in Ethiopia have included serving up to 400 children per day in the capital city of Addis Ababa with education and daily nutritional feeding. The children enrolled in programs like these also have access to health care and medicines. World Children’s Fund sends pharmaceuticals and medicines into Ethiopia that are provided free of charge to children and their families who have no way to pay for something as simple as an antibiotic.

Ethiopia has suffered drought and famine, political turmoil, and conflict with bordering countries. Ethiopia’s own civil conflict has also torn the country apart. It is one of Africa's poorest countries and nearly half of all adults are illiterate. The WCF supported programs in Ethiopia have focused on children and youth who are living in poverty, in communities like Gulele, a sub-city of Addis.

WCF supported feeding programs in the Lusaka area of Zambia have included serving nutritious meals to about 350 school age children each day at school. Because of WCF support, these children can attend school and count on one meal each school day. Most children either have low-income parents and nearly half of the children are orphans. The food provided at lunch is a lifesaver to financially strapped families and orphans being cared for by family members and elderly grandparents. These children are considered "vulnerable" by the government, which often equates to malnutrition, sickness, and disease. WCF has provided infrastructure funding to construct classrooms and other buildings to accommodate the learning and feeding program in Lusaka. The impacts and success of the school feeding program have been “profound,” according to one program administrator. “We are seeing improvements in the attendance of children, alertness in the classroom and higher-grade achievements, but we need help. We have hundreds of hungry children waiting for a chance to come to our school to learn and get some food each day."

Your support allows us to lift children like these out of hunger and extreme poverty and help assure their survival. In addition to consistent feeding, they are receiving an education and a pathway to a brighter future.

World Children’s Fund is committed to meeting the humanitarian needs of the war-torn nation of South Sudan. South Sudan continues to suffer in the aftermath of war, conflict, drought, food insecurity and climate catastrophe. The country is in urgent need of emergency food aid and infrastructure like schools, medical clinics, and hospitals.

South Sudan, the newest nation in the world, imploded into civil war in 2013. After five years of fighting, an estimated 400,000 were dead and more than four million South-Sudanese were either internally displaced or had fled to bordering countries. Through it all, WCF has consistently provided aid.

World Children’s Fund has helped provide a sustainable solution to combatting South Sudan’s high maternal and infant mortality rate by providing infrastructure funding for the Juba College of Nursing and Midwifery. (JCONAM) WCF was one of the first non-governmental stakeholders to dive in with of the Ministry of Health in South Sudan to support the college. It became the first accredited college of nursing and midwifery in the republic of South Sudan.

At the time of South Sudan’s independence, its Ministry of Health estimated that the entire country had only 40 registered nurses with diplomas and two registered midwives. The ministry also estimated that more than 200,000 women a year were dying giving birth and from post-birth complications. Women were suffering and in dire need of trained midwives and nurses.

“South Sudan still remains one of the most dangerous places to become a mother because of its high maternal mortality rate,” says, Kathryn Hess, WCF International Program Director. “WCF’s partnership has helped save the lives of mothers and their babies in South Sudan. Every graduate, whether a nurse or midwife, has the potential to save the life of a future mother and child.”

WCF has also provided funding for the expansion of a medical clinic in the rural and isolated village of Duk Payuel. The expansion included a new surgical wing, male and female wards, an operating theatre, a recovery room, a nursing station, and storage facilities. The clinic operates as a primary health care center and many of the patients who receive care travel on foot for more than a day.

World Children’s Fund has worked to combat the hunger crisis in South Sudan by supporting programs in targeted regions battling food insecurity. WCF has helped to implement and has provided funding for medical programs to treat and prevent acute malnutrition in children under the age of five and women who are pregnant or breast-feeding. These programs reached women and children in the geographic area of Jonglei, the largest state in South Sudan. Program funding has included supporting medical outpatient facilities and stabilization centers in Ayod, Nyirol, Fangak and Boma counties.

Malnourished children are enrolled in feeding programs and receive deworming tablets and Vitamin A supplementation to assist their weak and depleted bodies to absorb nutrition. Children with severe and acute malnutrition who suffer from additional medical complications are treated at the stabilization centers.  Severely malnourished children in these programs are frequently also diagnosed with and treated for malaria, respiratory tract infections, diarrheal diseases, intestinal worm infestations and skin infections.

World Children’s Fund has also provided aid to South Sudanese refugees who have fled into neighboring Uganda. Uganda hosts more refugees than any other country in Africa, more than 1.5 million. WCF has joined forces with implementing partners in Uganda serving in the medical sector of refugee settlements managed by UNHCR. In addition to supplying medication and pharmaceuticals, WCF has provided resources to assist with the infrastructure and implementation of health care facilities. Programs have also focused on pre-natal care, pre-mature births and treating malnutrition of mothers and their babies living in refugee settlements.

World Children’s Fund is grateful for the opportunity to provide aid to help meet the needs of the people of South Sudan during this complex and on-going humanitarian crisis. We applaud every donor who has helped make these life-saving programs possible.

Through the years WCF donors have supplied emergency food relief to regions in Africa suffering from food insecurity fueled by drought and famine. Eastern Africa has suffered through numerous droughts during the last several years. These ravaging droughts have been exacerbated by the global rise in food prices, higher costs of fuel and supply chain disruptions. People, livestock and herds of animals are dying throughout the horn of Africa in Ethiopia, northern Kenya and Somalia. Children are the most vulnerable as their weak bodies are unable to fight off opportunistic diseases.

World Children's Fund has delivered food relief and aid in these emergencies and has intervened to help support the overwhelming number of refugees from Somalia who are fleeing into neighboring Kenya in search of food and water.

As scores of Somali refugees pour into Kenya, overcrowding and famine conditions push destitute families into informal settlements and encampments. Our Kenya based team has supplied nutritious food to these families in distress in geographic locations hit hard, like Garissa, in northeastern Kenya, located near the Somalia border. The effects of severe drought are evident. It is hot and dry. Carcasses of goats, cows, and camels litter the dusty roads. The riverbeds are empty. From the air, the dried-out river tributaries look like brown snakes winding their way through the arid land.

The large boxes of meals distributed by WCF to families living in the settlements are filled with small, individual pouches of food. The meals are comprised of rice and soy nuggets for protein, vitamins, minerals and dehydrated vegetables. The meal formula is specifically designed to save the lives of severely malnourished and starving children. The ingredients also improve the health, growth and physical well-being of children and adults who are no longer in immediate danger of starvation. WCF has also supported a daily feeding program for school children in Garissa to help ease the strain on limited resources and provide nutritious meals to hungry children.

The need for food in this region has never been greater - neither has the need for generosity. WCF is grateful for all our committed donors who have partnered with us to serve the hungry in times of famine. Because of your support, we have delivered boxes of hope to starving children and their families who are displaced by drought, and we have been able to serve the local children who would otherwise have no consistent source of food for survival.

The lack of infrastructure in developing countries is more than just an inconvenience. For the poor, it is a daily hardship that translates into reduced access to basics like healthcare. World Children's Fund has provided financial support around the globe for the construction and operational costs of medical clinics in countries like the Philippines, Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, and South-Sudan.

In Liberia, a country where most mothers give birth without medical assistance, WCF sponsored the construction and on-going operations of a pre-natal clinic, a well-baby clinic and a birthing center.

In response to the tremendous need in Nairobi, Kenya, World Children's Fund paid for the construction and supported the on-going operating costs of a medical clinic located in the outskirts of Nairobi in the suburb of Langata. Further project expansion included the addition of a lab, which because of the services available increased patient count dramatically. The clinic provides free testing, health care and pharmaceutical dispensary services to poor villagers from the surrounding community and to several hundred orphans and vulnerable children who live adjacent to the clinic.

On a typical day, the waiting room in the clinic is filled with mothers and their babies. Many of the mothers and other patients walk several kilometers to see a doctor. The clinic treats common ailments like coughs, colds, respiratory illnesses, malaria, pneumonia, and skin diseases and provides poor communities much needed care and lab services.

WCF has also financially supported on-going operations for the orphanage adjacent to the clinic, which includes overhead for the campus operations. The compound is a vast juxtaposition from living conditions in urban and congested Nairobi. It is peaceful and filled with shade trees. It is full of joy, play areas and swings. The orphans and vulnerable children living at the center have access to education in a primary school on campus. They also thrive because of the daily nutritional meals, nearby medical treatment and the love of the house "mums" who care for them each day.

Because of committed partners and donors like you, impoverished children and families do not need to die from preventable and treatable diseases. Your investment in infrastructure and health services is saving lives. At WCF, we are inspired by projects and programs that build stronger communities and bring hope to struggling villages and people.