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A Mother’s Journey to Feed Her Family

on  July 9, 2019

For 26-year-old Elen, a mother of four living in a rural mountain community in Iloilo, Philippines, providing basic needs for her family has been a challenge that she has persevered to overcome.Raising her children in a home built out of bamboo, Elen and her husband have faced many roadblocks over the years. With the country’s economy primarily supported by farming and hired labor, like many of the people in the community, Elen has also struggled financially. Their family often only had access to ground rice cooked with milk. Lacking nutritious food was difficult and began to affect their family’s health, especially for her young daughter, Nickie.After Nickie was classified as underweight and malnourished, Elen had the opportunity to enroll in our partner International Care Ministries’ (ICM) Home-Based Feeding Transform program. Through this program, Nickie began to receive Rise Against Hunger meals.The leaders and trainers at the program, along with Elen, quickly noticed a change in Nickie’s weight and her overall health.Fe, a health trainer with ICM, supports Elen’s community with weekly lessons on values, health and livelihood. She’s seen firsthand how Elen has paved the way to a new life for her family.“Elen has benefited a lot from the program. She learned to manage her family and her previously malnourished child, Nickie. Through the Rise Against Hunger meals, Elen’s challenge of her daughter’s malnutrition was lifted,” Fe said.Pastora Edelyn, the leader of the Transform program, became involved with ICM through her advocacy for poverty and hunger. Edelyn works with Elen and other members of the program to teach participants about nutritious food, health and how to overcome malnourishment.Elen shares, “Before the Rise Against Hunger meals, Nickie’s food was only ‘am’ (ground rice cooked with milk). When Nickie was enrolled in ICM’s feeding program and regularly fed with Rise Against Hunger meals, she improved and attained her ideal weight.”With the help of the ICM program and benefits of receiving nutritious meals, Elen now has the tools to successfully feed her family, choose healthier options for daily meals and spreading awareness within her community. 

About the Author

Janae Curtain is the Manager of Digital Marketing at Rise Against Hunger. Janae leads the development and execution of digital marketing initiatives including social media, email marketing, digital advertising and more!

More Posts by Janae Curtain

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.