Rise Against Hunger Celebrates National Volunteer Month

on  April 5, 2021

Every April, the nonprofit sector takes a moment to pause and reflect on the power harnessed by volunteers, and the opportunity they provide us to achieve our missions at scale. At Rise Against Hunger, volunteers truly move our organization toward progress. Ending global hunger is a collective responsibility and requires global collaboration. Our volunteers commit to something bigger than themselves, and that passion is contagious! We’re so grateful to have volunteers return year after year in bigger, brighter ways.Thousands of volunteers have helped us package over 540 million meals over the past 22 years, directly impacting the lives of thousands of people facing food insecurity around the globe. Additional volunteers support our warehouses and our programs, while skills-based volunteers have helped our organization become more resilient to every complex challenge we’ve faced, COVID-19 included. Our Board of Directors and local Community Engagement Boards volunteer tirelessly to ensure we’re equipped to both navigate and overcome current and future challenges. To each Rise Against Hunger volunteer carrying our mission forward, we are profoundly grateful.While we can’t get together now, we all look forward to those moments when we can say a big resounding thank you to our volunteers and supporters around the world. We invite you to continue your volunteer journey at Rise Against Hunger by learning about our virtual volunteering opportunities.

Interested in learning more?
Our team is ready to help!

To find out more about meal packaging and how to organize your own event, fill out the form and a Rise Against Hunger team member will contact you to start planning. If you’ve connected with our team or filled out this form previously, no need to submit it again. A Rise Against Hunger team member will be in touch soon!
 

Perfect for all kinds of organizations:

  • Corporations
  • Civic & Service Clubs
  • Communities of Faith
  • Colleges & Universities

About the Author

Natalie Norton is the Volunteer Impact Manager at Rise Against Hunger. She works with our volunteers to drive impact by creating meaningful volunteer opportunities to achieve our mission at scale.

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.