Add “Help End Hunger by 2030″ to Your 2020 New Year’s Resolutions

Add “Help End Hunger by 2030" to Your 2020 New Year’s Resolutions

on January 2, 2020

If you’re anything like me, the new year is a time for reflecting on the previous year and considering what you’d like to happen in the year ahead. I, like almost half of all Americans, make at least a few New Year’s resolutions annually. New Year’s resolutions are a great opportunity to think about how you can make a positive change. Still looking for a New Year’s resolution or two? Resolve to help end hunger!Here at Rise Against Hunger, our mission is to end world hunger by 2030, a goal supported by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2. As we ring in 2020, we’re marking more than just a new year; we’re also marking that there are only 10 years to reach our goal of zero hunger by 2030. Therefore, it’s a great time for you to help end hunger as one of your New Year’s resolutions!

Photo courtesy Oceans Orthodontics & Pediatric Dentistry

Here are five ways you can carry out that resolution:

Host a Rise Against Hunger Experience.

Rise Against Hunger’s meals provide nutrition to people in need around the world. These meals are packaged at our Rise Against Hunger Experience meal packaging events, and you can host one! You and a group from your school, church, business, or other organization can come together to package rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and vitamins into bags, which will then be distributed to the world’s most vulnerable populations across the globe. You would truly be “lending a hand” to help end hunger!

Volunteer.

There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to package and distribute the meals. We’re, therefore, always looking for volunteers at our U.S. locations. As a volunteer, you would be supporting the mission to end hunger by assisting with operational and administrative tasks, from restocking supplies and preparing shipments, to organizing materials and promoting local events. There are 28 locations across the United States, so check out our Locations page to find your closest location and then complete our volunteer interest form.

Spread the word— both online and IRL.

The more people working to end world hunger, the greater opportunity to achieve our goal. Therefore, informing your community about the issue can make a real impact! You can do this by showing your support on social media and sharing Rise Against Hunger’s updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn with your own network. You can also have conversations with friends and family about hunger and why it is an important issue to you. Spreading the word can engage more people in the commitment to end hunger.

Donate.

Donating is a simple yet impactful way to help end hunger. Whether a one-time or recurring donation, your support will assist Rise Against Hunger’s initiatives and help to provide food and aid to the world’s most vulnerable populations!

Shop with Amazon Smile.

If you’ll be doing any online shopping in 2020, use Amazon Smile to give back while shopping. You can go to www.smile.amazon.com, search for Rise Against Hunger to select us as your charity of choice, and then shop through the Amazon Smile website to have 0.5% of your eligible purchase price donated to Rise Against Hunger. It’s a small but impactful way you can help to end hunger!As we start 2020, may we all go into the year committed to ending hunger and remembering it is possible to do so by 2030. Thank you so much for your support!

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.