Top 5 Ways You Can Help End Global Hunger This Holiday Season

on December 14, 2023

With a vision of a world without hunger, we target remote, last-mile communities with limited access to diverse and nutritious food. With your help, we can continue to work alongside these communities creating hope and help by providing nourishing meals and empowering communities to develop long-term food security and self-sufficient economies. Keep reading to learn six ways you can help end global hunger this holiday season, and be sure to watch the video at the end of this blog for a special message to you — our community of Hunger Champions!

Donate to Further Our Mission

Bright futures start with a meal, and it starts with you. This holiday season, you can give the gift of hope to support the millions of people facing food insecurity worldwide, helping them lead an active, healthy life fueled by nourishment. As our commitment to the people we serve remains unwavering, we invite you to take action against hunger by donating $25 or more before December 31, 2023, to receive a free Rise Against Hunger Pura Vida bracelet.

Provide Hope with the Meet the Need Market

As Rise Against Hunger works to reach over two million people across the globe in extreme crisis, our Meet the Need Market features eight items that will make a lasting impact toward sustainable hunger relief for generations to come. From medicine to seedlings to bars of soap and emergency relief meals and more, every gift matters — leading one individual or one family out of food insecurity. Donate today or start a fundraiser to grow the movement to end hunger as an individual or a team. Your gift could mean more to a family or community than any gift ever has before.

Join Our Newsletter and New Messaging Platform

Stay up-to-date on the impact you’ve made possible by subscribing to our newsletter. Each month, you’ll receive a direct look into the life of our organization, our programs, upcoming events, campaigns, ways to get involved, and so much more. We’re so grateful for your ongoing support that we don’t want you to miss seeing your impact in action, from nourishing lives through meal packaging events to responding to emergencies with in-need resources and empowering communities. Also, we’ve recently launched a new messaging platform for exclusive updates on the go. We invite you to join us by texting MEAL to 40212.

Shop Our Online Store

Whether you’re volunteering for a meal packaging event, holding a virtual Gather for Good, or interested in spreading the word for the millions of people around the world facing hunger, browse our online store of Rise Against Hunger products. All products purchased from our online store have the power to kickstart a family’s journey out of hunger, which often starts with a single meal and leads to resilience, self-sufficiency, education, empowerment and bright futures in communities across the world. Shop our online store of products today.

Spread the Word on Social Media

Be sure you’re following Rise Against Hunger’s social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and Threads, for regular updates on the fight against hunger. From meal packaging events to ways you can get involved and global partner stories to campaigns with real-life impact, we invite you to join us by sharing our impact with the world and letting others in your circle know about hunger relief and the hopes and dreams of children and their families facing hunger worldwide. Thank you for growing the movement to end hunger!

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.