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Meal Donations Help Students Thrive in Belize

on  August 20, 2020

Telma, described by those who know her well as a “very loving mother,” is 47 years old and lives with her five children in a rural village in Belize, located about eight miles from the nearest town. Telma and her husband have five children. Her husband lives in a different part of the country and sends money to support his family when he is able. In the past five years, the family has relocated twice, and may be required to relocate a third time if their current home is sold. For many years, Telma and her children survived on two meals a day, mainly consisting of tortillas and beans. As a result, they struggled with malnutrition.A few years ago, the children began receiving nutritious Rise Against Hunger meals at school, distributed by our partner, Kidz Konnect 4 Jesus. With the help of the Rise Against Hunger meals, the family has reported being in better health and experienced hunger less frequently. Each year, Rise Against Hunger serves 400,000 children like Telma’s through school feeding programs around the world. COVID-19 has prevented at least 200,000 of those children from accessing meals in a school setting, but we continue to work with partners to reach kids at risk during the global health crisis.Julia is a Community Health Worker in Telma’s community. She explains that she has seen the health of the children greatly improve, and rarely suffer from colds as they did in the past. Julia shares the Rise Against Hunger meals have helped many families, including Telma’s, increase the number of meals they consume each day.Shirley is a Registered Nurse and the Ground Medical Coordinator for Kidz Konnect 4 Jesus. Shirley reports that she has personally seen Telma struggle to provide for her family in the past, and the meals have been a blessing to her.Hunger and malnutrition are urgent concerns for 820 million people around the world, and that number threatens to drastically rise in the midst of COVID-19. With your help, we can continue to reach 2 million people we serve worldwide during this time of unimaginable crisis. To ensure that children like Telma’s continue to receive nutritious school meals, please donate now.

About the Author

Paige Anderson is the Individual Giving Specialist for Rise Against Hunger. She focuses on donor recognition and marketing. She is passionate about contributing to the common good.

More Posts by Paige Anderson

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.