Creating Transformation through Nutrition for Ivy and Her Son

Ivy is a 32-year-old woman living in Iloilo in the Philippines with her son, Ricky. In their rural community, most homes are built from found materials like nipa, bamboo, iron and other scrap metals. Families like Ivy’s earn incomes through labor intensive jobs like farming, carpentry, driving pedicabs and other forms of hired labor, and gather water from nearby manual or hand pumps.

Like 30% of young children in the Philippines, Ricky suffered from malnutrition. Throughout the country, food supply and production are ongoing challenges, and Ivy worked to find a way to help her son recover.

Things changed for Ivy and Ricky when they enrolled in the local Transform program facilitated by partner International Care Ministries. Through this program, Ivy received nutritious Rise Against Hunger meals to prepare at home for her family. The nutrients in the meal helped to put Ricky on the path out of malnutrition and toward a healthier future.

Pastor Mila Digna, who serves as a Partner Pastor for the Transform program in Ivy’s community, shared that the Rise Against Hunger meals have been a “great help” to the program’s participants as they not only provide nutrition, but also enable families to save more of their incomes that they would typically have spent on food.

Ricky was just one of many children in his community who recovered from malnutrition and reached healthier weights with the help of Rise Against Hunger meals in their diets. Jinky Jemera, a Health Coordinator in the Transform program, shared that mothers who enrolled in the program learned valuable parenting skills, especially in the area of early childhood nutrition.

To date, Hunger Champions like you have helped Rise Against Hunger distribute more than 539 million meals and other assistance to 78 countries, including the Philippines, where we’ve sent nearly 21 million meals! These meals have been truly transformational for families like Ivy’s, and like May and her daughter Mikhaella.

You can be part of that transformation right now, especially as the COVID-19 crisis presents serious threats to communities like Ivy’s. More than 820 million people face hunger around the globe, and the UN has stated that the number of people facing acute hunger could DOUBLE in 2020 due to the ongoing health crisis. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by these numbers, but when we feel overwhelmed, we remember the faces of Ivy and Ricky. They represent countless families like theirs who are counting on us to provide nutritious meals to help them continue on the difficult path out of hunger and poverty, even in this time of crisis.

Please donate now to ensure we are able to continue reaching families at risk around the globe.