Posted on April 12, 2023
Honoring Women Leaders in the Fight Against Hunger
Note from the CREDO team: This April, Action Against Hunger is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO community will allow Action Against Hunger to continue its rapid response efforts, within 24-48 hours of an emergency including earthquakes, droughts, floods, and others, and deploy resources to where it is needed most to help save lives, empower communities, and end hunger.
Read this important blog post from Action Against Hunger’s Senior Communications Officer Meril Cullinan, then click here to visit CREDODonations.com to cast your vote to help determine how we distribute our monthly grant to this organization and our other amazing grantees this April. The following blog post was originally published here and has been adapted for our site.
On International Women’s Day and every day, Action Against Hunger celebrates women change-makers around the world – the sisters, farmers, mothers, scientists, aunts, doctors, grandmothers, and entrepreneurs who are working create a world free from hunger with equal opportunities for all.
We must also spotlight the unique challenges and injustices that women and girls continue to face. They are disproportionately affected by hunger: too often, women and girls eat last and least. The top drivers of hunger – conflict, climate change, and inequity – also hit women hardest. But, at the same time, women are our most powerful allies in the fight against hunger.
- 80% of people who are displaced by climate change are women. There are other impacts of climate change, too: in Kenya, for example, child marriages and teen pregnancies have increased in recent years, in part due to the prolonged drought.
- The gap between the number of hungry women and hungry men in the world has more than doubled in the last three years: Food-insecure women outnumbered men by 126 million in 2021—an increase from 49 million in 2019.
- Women who participate in household decisions produce and earn more – women also reinvest as much as 90% of their income back into their families, helping to improve health, nutrition, and more.
In communities impacted by climate change, women are leading efforts to manage water sources, plant climate-resilient crops, and start new businesses. Around the world, female health workers and humanitarians are changing how hunger is prevented and treated in countless homes, health centers, and Ministries of Health. In so many of the places where Action Against Hunger works, mothers are coming together to support and learn from each other, invest in themselves, and improve food security and nutrition among their families.
Around the world, women are creating brighter futures for themselves, their families, and their communities. Below, find just a few of their stories.
AFGHAN WOMEN SPEAK OUT
After seeing the impact of gender injustice firsthand, one Afghan humanitarian worker switched her career path from medicine to law and now fights for gender equality: “I work to defend human rights, especially women’s rights to receive an education and I help them as much as I can.”
GROWING RICE IN FLOOD WATERS
The water from three years of flooding has not receded in Paguir, South Sudan, but community members are making the most of their new environment – they’ve started growing rice in the flood waters. “My family can benefit from this farm, but it will also be my own,” says Nyaok, a woman rice farmer.
TEACHING EACH OTHER TO SPOT MALNUTRITION
In Kenya, Community Health Volunteer Rose learned how to measure children for malnutrition. She goes door-to-door, checking up on her community’s children and showing their mothers how to do the same.
RESILIENCY AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
In Bangladesh, Shilpi saw her hopes for a brighter future wash away in near-constant flooding. Then, she learned to plant resilient gardens, raise animals, and farm fish. “Now, we eat well,” she says.