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A Family Committed to Ending Hunger

on  August 17, 2020

At Rise Against Hunger Experience meal packaging events, we hope our volunteers leave not only having packaged meals, but also feeling empowered to make a positive impact in the world and help end hunger. Wafa Al-Rimawi shares how she felt called to help and how her employer — our partner Becton, Dickinson and Company — and her family are involved in Rise Against Hunger’s mission.I started volunteering with Rise Against Hunger in 2016 to help others and to find a way of giving back. I continue to stay involved because it is one of the greatest joys in life, to be able to help others in need.When my son was a high school junior, he took on the challenge of raising funds to host a Rise Against Hunger Experience meal packaging event as a community service project. Once my son learned of the way that Rise Against Hunger empowered children to obtain an education by providing meals, he knew this was the organization he wanted to support. My employer, BD, matched the amount he raised, which collectively totaled what we needed to host the meal packaging event at the local middle school. Eighth-grade students, including my daughter, joined together with parents, teachers, staff and administrators to pack 10,152 meals. It was a real family affair.I attribute my commitment to giving back to learning by example at an early age. My mother, one of the greatest people I ever knew, was selfless in the way she supported and showed kindness to others. Through her, I understood how giving back could touch other people’s lives in a profoundly positive way. To be able to honor my mother by helping others is one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, and I hope that in some way my mother’s legacy lives on through my actions. Being part of Rise Against Hunger’s mission to end world hunger for the past several years, I am proud to have had an impact in empowering people of all ages, especially children.Shortly after the successful meal packaging event at my daughter’s middle school, Rise Against Hunger invited me to serve on its Community Engagement Board in Kearny, NJ for its New York Metro Warehouse. In that role, I was able to obtain a better understanding of what it takes to prepare for and run a meal packaging event, and I also benefited from a broader understanding of the bigger-picture impact that Rise Against Hunger has on communities they serve around the world. In that role, I helped to coordinate a new fundraising event, which raised one of the highest profits earned from any Rise Against Hunger fundraising event nationwide for the entire 2019 year.I am extremely fortunate to work for an employer that encourages volunteering and giving back. After seven years of inviting employees to join together in company-sponsored meal packaging events for Rise Against Hunger, BD reached an impressive milestone in 2020: Together, employees at more than a dozen locations had collectively packaged more than 1 million meals for people facing hunger. Due to my volunteer hours in service to Rise Against Hunger, I applied for the 2020 Becton Volunteer Impact Award — it is BD’s most prestigious award in recognition of employee volunteerism — and from a large pool of candidates, I was selected as a recipient. Not only was I recognized for my commitment and efforts, but BD made a generous donation to Rise Against Hunger in honor of my volunteer service.When I started packing meals with Rise Against Hunger, I just wanted to help others. I never thought of being recognized for helping to make a difference in other’s lives. It is humbling and a true honor to be affiliated with Rise Against Hunger and to receive the 2020 Becton Volunteer Impact Award from BD.We love to hear inspiring stories like Wafa’s and are happy to congratulate her on her award! Want to become a Hunger Champion, too? Check out ways to do so here!

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About the Author

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.