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Local Food Procurement Supports Mario as He Works To Provide for His Family

on  September 15, 2022

In a neighborhood between the sea and the Comoro River in Timor-Leste’s capital city of Dili, Mario, age 27, lives and attends university. A major city with many higher education opportunities, a lot of young people live in the area. This has, however, created a housing shortage and driven up the price of hostels, quadrupling the cost of accommodation.  Before the pandemic, Mario lived in a hostel in the city with his brother and sister. While attending university, they split the cost of rent and earned money by tending to a neighbor’s garden and working as an on-call driver. The COVID-19 pandemic then caused many changes. Mario lost work opportunities, and there were lockdowns and university closures. Also, in April 2021, a flood in Dili destroyed the hostel where they lived as well as everything they owned. During this time, the siblings struggled to find food regularly, sometimes eating only one meal per day. As a result, Mario’s brother and sister decided to return home to Oecusse. Mario stayed in Dili to find work and send money home to his family. Through a partnership with Salesian Missions, Rise Against Hunger provides cash-based grants for local food to be purchased and distributed to communities in Timor-Leste through the Don Bosco Foundation. According to Francisca, a distributor during the first round of the local and regional procurement efforts, food was distributed to 1,375 people in the area, including Mario. The food was distributed to refugees and people in schools, boarding houses, orphanages and more. 

One of the boarding houses supported by local and regional food procurement.
The locally procured food not only provided nourishment to Mario and the other people served, but it also supported the area’s economy. Francisca said, “The procurement of the local food provided an opportunity to find good and healthy foods from local entrepreneurs.” For Mario, it starts with a meal, and it leads to resilience and opportunities for employment. The local procurement guaranteed he had healthy food for the foreseeable future. He said this helps him sleep well with a full stomach as he works to send money back to his family. You can join the It Starts With a Meal™️ movement to support resilience, empowerment and bright futures for people — like Mario — across the globe by donating today!

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.