
My name is Jessica and I work for Friends of the World Food Program (Friends of WFP) in Washington, DC. I have lived in the Washington, DC area for the last 15 years, but I spent much of my childhood living in Guatemala City with my family.
My parents both worked in international development while we lived overseas, so it is no surprise to them that today I work in support of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). From a young age, I was very aware of poverty in the developing world. Although I didn’t entirely understand it until many years later, hunger and poverty were things that I saw all around me while I grew up. I remember traveling around Guatemala and visiting towns without clean water, where families had no houses and children had little to eat.
This awareness has stuck with me, and it is the reason I find myself where I am today. At the University of Virginia, I studied international politics with a focus on human rights issues. Upon graduation, I knew I wanted to make a tangible difference in the international arena – to find some way to help those who cannot help themselves. I was lucky to end up working with an organization that does just that!
WFP is a lifeline to millions of people around the world. At a time when there are more than 1 billion hungry people, the work of WFP is especially crucial. It still amazes me that it costs WFP just 25 cents to provide a meal to a child in school, and it certainly helps keep things in perspective. Hunger may be a very large problem, but it is solvable.
One of my coworkers traveled to Guatemala last year to visit WFP programs in the field. In the village of Cantel, she met Heidi, a young 10-year-old girl whose family struggled to make ends meet. Nearly 60 percent of the children in Heidi’s village suffer from chronic malnutrition, which can hinder brain development and physical growth. To curb this frightening trend and offer an incentive for children to attend school, WFP provides healthy meals to Heidi and her classmates. She receives a nutritious cup of porridge for her school meal each day, which is enriched with micronutrients.

“I like the food served here, and I really enjoy coming to school a lot,” said Heidi as she ate her lunch.
This one simple act of providing a daily school meal helps Heidi concentrate and do better in school, and also eases her parents’ burden of struggling to provide food to their entire family. Today, Heidi is continuing her education in rural Guatemala, where many children either do not attend or drop out of school. Her favorite subject is math, and she has dreams of becoming a teacher.
Stories of children like Heidi truly illustrate how important the work of WFP is. I want to thank all of the members of BloggerAid for your support of Friends of WFP. When I first stumbled across the BloggerAid group last fall, I was so excited that food bloggers were getting together to raise awareness about the issue of hunger. Giz and I began emailing back and forth, and I guess the rest is history. All of us in the Friends of WFP office are so thrilled about everything you have done so far to raise awareness about the 1 billion hungry people in the world. We are even more excited about the BloggerAid cookbook and we cannot wait to see the final product!