• Other Global Locations
  • Search
Host an Event
Donate

Joao Celebrates His 16th Year With Nutritious Meals and Academic Success

on  January 29, 2020

In some countries, turning 16 comes with a special birthday party, gifts and a newfound sense of maturity. For Joao, being 16 years old in Timor Leste means celebrating his academic success, receiving nourishing meals and finding hope for the future.Maliana, a city located in Southeastern Asia, is where Joao lives and attends school. His homeland is Timor Leste, an island country with a little over 1.3 million people. According to the United Nations, most of its cities are filled with residents who are primarily dependent on rice and maize farming. With agriculture being a mainstay of the economy, most people farm and create handmade products to make a living.At only 16 years old, Joao studies at the Don Bosco Technical School. Though he works hard and strives to be an excellent student, he hasn’t had enough energy to pay attention in class. Along with dealing with financial issues at home, ongoing political tensions in the country also affected Joao not being able to eat at school due to a lack of government funding. Because of this issue, partner Salesian Missions stepped in and began distributing Rise Against Hunger meals through a program at the school.”Me and my friends couldn’t study well because government money for food came very late, so this year, we are very grateful for the Rise Against Hunger food program at school. The support really came at the right time when we needed it most,” Joao said.Consistently ranked as one of the most impoverished countries in the world, Timor Leste’s communities of people suffering from hunger are a result of the government’s fight for independence. With over 40 percent of the population below the poverty line, the majority of the people are facing a lack of basic necessities every day. To alleviate poverty in the country, the World Factbook states that the Poverty Reduction Unit of the United Nations is developing social security and school feeding programs to strengthen the economy, provide affordable products and assist in ending hunger altogether.As a collaboration with these programs and the Salesian Missions, the Don Bosco Foundation was created in Timor Leste to support the lives of the impoverished by providing them with enough food to eat, proper nutrients to have the energy to study and to work hard for a better future.Fr. Gui, the provincial economist at the foundation, has the role of overseeing various projects and finalizing reports for the hunger reduction program. With the challenge of overcoming the geographical distance between the office and the school, his hope is to now continue to help people in his country by expanding the program.Rice and maize are the most readily available foods in Timor Leste, which do not provide all of the nutrients necessary for people to thrive. Headmaster of the school, Bro Marcel, worked with Don Bosco Foundation to create a program that would help the students receive nutritious meals on a daily basis.Joao says, “The food is also very healthy in terms of quality of the ingredients. I feel energized and strong after eating these meals.”Now having the energy to focus, Joao is an exceptional student and plans to graduate with a bright future ahead. Being very grateful for his achievements, he is very happy to be able to attend school for free, as his family previously struggled to cover his school fees.With the determination to make his family proud, Joao continues to strive to make education a top priority and is one step closer to success, and knows that his future is dependent on his own sense of hope.What if we all came together to create change for more people like Joao? If your contribution could make a difference and touch the lives of an entire community, how inspired would you feel? Share your compassion to help someone in need by donating today, getting involved or signing up for a Rise Against Hunger Experience.Sources:United Nations: https://www.un.org/FAO: http://www.fao.org/home/en/The World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

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.