A child feeding a toddler

Children and Poverty

Feed a Hungry Child

Donate to provide supplemental food, vitamins and medical care to malnourished children and to support our therapeutic feeding and food stability initiatives for infants and newborns.

Health and Nutrition Fund

Hunger is on the Rise

For decades, the number of hungry people in the world had been declining. This isn't true anymore. Hunger and food insecurity is on the rise!

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the number of undernourished people in the world has been on the rise since 2015, and is back to levels seen in 2010 and 2011.

Currently, there are 820 million people in the world who do not have enough to eat.1 And another 2 billion people live without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food that allows them to remain healthy and lead an active live.1 They are food insecure.

Food insecurity is defined as not having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food that allows a person to remain healthy and lead an active life. Food insecurity affects about nine percent of the global population, with hundreds of millions of children experiencing hunger as a result.

Hunger and Malnutrition are Preventable

The fact that the world produces more than enough food to feed the entire world (4 billion metric tons), and one-third of it gets wasted, leaving hundreds of millions of people hungry, is a tragedy.

High-income countries leave food on the plate, and low- and middle-income countries leave food in the field or lose it in production. This results in millions of malnourished children dying each year from a preventable cause.

Hunger and malnutrition create a self-sustaining barrier that keeps people stuck in poverty. Hunger makes it more difficult for a person to learn, work, pursue opportunities and contribute to society. It drains a person's energy, destroys mental acuity, and exacts a heavy price on health throughout his or her life.

Beginning with undernutrition in fetal and early life and extending to long-term health problems such as stunted physical growth, coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, malnutrition exacts an enormous cost in quality and length of life.

Chronically undernourished children who manage to survive their first five years, often live with devastating results. Their bodies are stunted physically, they are highly susceptible to illness, and their brains are underdeveloped. The hope of reaching their full, God-given potential is all but shattered.

1/5
OF ALL CHILDREN UNDER FIVE
remain undernourished

45%
OF DEATHS OF CHILDREN UNDER AGE 5
are linked to malnutrition

11%
OF THE GLOBAL POPULATION
suffers from hunger

Sources: World Bank Group, International Food Policy Research Institute, United Nations Development Program

Put an End to Hunger and Malnutrition

When children do not have enough food to eat, or the food available to them is deficient in nutrients, malnourishment and chronic health issues become a serious and potentially life-threatening reality.

To fight this, we partner with local churches around the world to implement early intervention health and nutrition initiatives providing individualized care and attention for millions of children affected by poverty

Our health and nutrition initiatives help meet the life-threatening needs of hungry children, while also providing preventive care to support long-term wellness.

Our frontline church partners are trained to identify child malnutrition and take immediate action to address it. Often that means a program of emergency feeding and vitamin supplements for a severely malnourished child, as well as working with the child's caregivers to ensure that meals at home meet nutritional needs.

Additionally, our church partners provide the children with regular nutritious meals and snacks on program activity days and teach the children about the importance of a balanced diet, as well as ways the children can eat healthy outside of program activity days.

By giving to our Health and Nutrition Fund, you are providing supplemental food, vitamins and medical care to malnourished children and are supporting our therapeutic feeding and food stability initiatives for infants and newborns.

Your donation will safeguard children from illnesses that hamper their early childhood development and threaten their lives. With your support, we can provide poor children around the world the nutritious food, medical care, and health and hygiene training they need to survive and thrive.

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With Compassion, your donation is used wisely to help children around the world.

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Questions?

Please call us at 800-336-7676, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. MT to speak with a Compassion representative.

Hungry Children are Still Fighting to Survive

Access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health, but hungry and malnourished children have a daily fight for survival. While you can't provide for every one of the world's hungry children, you CAN make a difference for one child. Save a child today!

Compassion International is a holistic child development organization addressing a wide range of poverty-related issues including malnutrition, medical needs and emergencies, illiteracy, disaster relief, education, and income-generation. The complexity of poverty means it can't be solved by tackling just one area. It must be addressed holistically, just as a child develops holistically. That's why our approach to fighting poverty includes the physical, social, economic, and spiritual needs of the poor.

Source:

1 FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2019. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019. Safeguarding against economic slowdowns and downturns. Rome, FAO. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.