December 5, 2007
Alliance for Food Aid Conducts First Workshop
The Alliance for Food Aid (AFA) brought together 80 participants for its first workshop, titled “International Food Aid: Where Are We Headed?” on December 5 in Washington, D.C. ACDI/VOCA lead the organization of the event to examine food aid’s effectiveness. AFA comprises 14 private voluntary organizations and cooperatives that support the effective use of food aid in humanitarian and development programs overseas.
Charles Sandefur, AFA chairman and president of Adventist Development and Relief Agency International, opened the event by thanking the representatives from various NGO, governmental, donor and recipient food aid stakeholders and emphasizing the need to continue the work made possible with food aid. He described AFA member World Vision’s Rwanda Title II Program, which distributes rations to people living with HIV/AIDS. Sandefur described the tremendous impact those rations have in fortifying those afflicted with the disease and giving them a reliable source of nutrition to continue living their lives, saying, “It’s just one of those programs that makes you smile.” He said he visited with beneficiaries in Rwanda and described how one of the female beneficiaries took him by the hand and said “let’s dance” to celebrate the impact that the program had had on her and others’ lives. Sandefur told participants of the workshop to remember the woman’s story and how it shows the great impact food aid has. He said, “She is the one that gives our work dignity. Our work gives her hope.”
Panelists represented the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry; the U.S. House Subcommittee on Specialty Crops, Rural Development & Foreign Agriculture; USDA; USAID; the International Food Policy Research Institute; the Embassy of the Republic of Mozambique; and the U.N. World Food Programme. The panelists and various AFA members spoke on how to enhance the effectiveness of food aid, the role of implementing agencies, and challenges and opportunities facing food aid today.
Avram “Buzz” Guroff, ACDI/VOCA’s senior vice president for Food Security & Specialty Crops, spoke about ACDI/VOCA’s past and present PL 480 Title II programs in Rwanda. Guroff oversees ACDI/VOCA’s other food aid-based development programs in Ecuador, the Philippines, Indonesia, Liberia, Vietnam, Cape Verde, Uganda, West Bank and Rwanda, among other countries. ACDI/VOCA has monetized food aid on behalf of USAID to fund rapid recovery projects following the Rwandan genocide and since to strengthen and develop cooperatives and associations; improve agricultural development and increase production; and use natural resources in a sustainable and economically sound manner. ACDI/VOCA has succeeded in strengthening food security and increasing smallholder incomes through its food aid-based development programs. One success story is ACDI/VOCA’s support for the Karaba Coffee Cooperative. ACDI/VOCA awarded the cooperative a $36,000 grant to build a coffee washing station, and provided management and governance training. In September 2007 coffee produced by the co-op earned an impressive score of 96 (out of 100) from Coffee Review, a leading coffee-buying guide, a tremendous achievement that will help increase the smallholders’ income and help them to reinvest into their communities. (To learn more, click here).
Another panelist from the Embassy of the Republic of Mozambique, Commercial Counselor Luis Sitoe, spoke about how food aid has played an important role in Mozambique by aiding emergency responses to natural disasters and also providing funding to development programs in Mozambique. He said, “Food aid was used to not only feed the people [following natural disasters], but through funds from monetization to buy the tools and seeds necessary to implement farming to feed people in the future.” Sitoe said that Mozambique’s development has been greatly helped by U.S. food aid-funded projects. “I see [in Mozambique] that there is a great contribution from the monetization of food. … We wouldn’t have gotten this far without development assistance.”
The AFA workshop concluded with roundtable discussions on how to make food aid more effective in promoting food security and addressing HIV/AIDS, streamlining the administration of programs, and what is the future of food aid-based development work. To learn more about the Alliance for Food Aid, visit their website. To learn more about ACDI/VOCA’s work in commodity management, click here.