COVID-19 threatens millions already vulnerable due to food insecurity Just a couple of months before COVID-19 spread across nearly every border in the world, Ângela Gregório António Chale Macie began serving as a UN Volunteer in Nampula, Mozambique. Little did she know just how critical her role would become for the people in Erati district when the Coronavirus endangered their already-limited access to food.

This Memorandum of Understanding is a stepping stone for more fortified and promising collaboration between the two organizations for the benefit of future generations. UNV has long been a proponent of WFP, and UN Volunteers have steadfastly supported its delivery over the years. Notably, UNV and WFP have been working together in the Sahel region, where it is estimated that over 20 million people are affected by conflict and 2.4 million people are mired in poverty, hunger and in need of food assistance.

In Syria, 3.5 million of 6.5 million food-insecure Syrians receive food rations every month from the World Food Programme. Every month, WFP uses over 4,600 trucks to deliver emergency food assistance to more than 1,300 distribution points in all of Syria’s 14 governorates.

The World Food Programme’s Panama Regional Bureau oversees operations in 11 countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. One of Benjamin’s tasks was to ensure the protection of populations affected by emergencies in these countries. Through my work I aimed at ensuring that the resources provided by WFP were fairly-distributed, efficiently utilized, and would not stir up or fuel existing conflict in local communities,” Benjamin explains.