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Creating Transformation through Nutrition for Ivy and Her Son

on  July 16, 2020

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.

Partner Pastor for the Transform program, Pastor Mila Digna.
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.
Jinky Jemera, a Health Coordinator in the Transform program.
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.

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.