At the World Food Bank, the work that we do centers firmly on two key goals: ending world hunger and lifting family farmers out of poverty. We are driven to do this work because we believe in a world where all people can live in health and dignity with the freedom and means to support their families, contribute to their communities, and pursue fulfillment in their lives.
On World Refugee Day, our hearts go out to all of the refugees across this planet who are endeavoring to do just that and who have sacrificed their homes in order to find safe dwelling and better opportunities for themselves and their children. We know that people do not take the decision to flee their homes lightly, and that refugees are often escaping unimaginable conditions in their home countries, such as war, persecution, natural disaster, starvation, and more.
In Uganda, where we work, we are currently building a 5,000-acre farm in Hoima, adjacent to one of the country’s largest refugee settlement, the Kyangwali Refugee Camp. Kyangwali houses more than 38,000 refugees, mostly from the DRC. As we launch operations at the farm, we are already in talks with local officials to hire many residents from Kyangwali to help us farm our land, and we plan to split our hires between residents from the local Ugandan communities and residents from the refugee camps.
In addition to providing employment for Kyangwali residents, we also plan to provide training and access to loans for refugees who are farming their own half-acre, government-issued plots of land nearby. We will do this in order to help them produce better quality food for their own families and produce higher yields of quality food to sell into the local markets. By becoming a guaranteed buyer for the surplus from these personal crops, the World Food Bank is helping to ensure higher incomes for farmers, meaning better education outcomes for their children, and better nutrition for farmers, meaning better health outcomes for their families.
We look forward to bringing you more stories and information on our work at Kyangali in the coming months.
Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash