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World Food Day is Almost Here! Meet Peter, a Food Hero in South Sudan

on  October 9, 2020

World Food Day is one of the United Nations’ most recognized holidays, as it is an opportunity to bring awareness to food security and the importance of achieving Sustainable Development Goal #2 of Zero Hunger. This year’s theme, “Grow, Nourish & Sustain Together,” calls for global solidarity to empower those at risk around the world. As a way to celebrate this important day, we would like to highlight one of our Food Heroes, Peter Lomago.Food Heroes are those who, despite their circumstance, do everything in their power to help elevate communities and eradicate hunger. Peter is the indigenous director at Lift Up the Vulnerable’s partner Hope For South Sudan. Growing up in a warzone, Peter became interested early on in pursuing something greater than himself. Due to the collapse of the educational infrastructure, Peter left his village at nine years old. He walked alone for days without food to the refugee camps in Uganda in the pursuit of a better life with educational opportunities. Living as a refugee, Peter was focused on completing elementary and high school in order to be part of growing a solution back home. When he returned to South Sudan as an adult, he would come to serve as an innovative and compassionate leader with Hope for South Sudan. He aided in the prevention of human trafficking as well as protecting, educating and empowering children in his community.Today, Peter plays a pivotal role in the Empowering Lives through Nutrition-Smart Agriculture initiative with Rise Against Hunger and Lift Up the Vulnerable. With his leadership, the five-year initiative will build capacity in crop production for consumption and income generation; increase dietary diversity and nutrition; and build a first-of-its-kind community farm school to equip and support more vulnerable people. Grassroots economic development is a game-changer for transitioning communities. Investing in children and women to be independent and innovative is a key requirement to help transform communities.Peter shared, “I am filled with great awe and amazement because of the timely connection with Rise Against Hunger. With the support from Rise Against Hunger, our activities — and especially the farm work — is the first of its kind in the region. Before, it was unthinkable that we can produce our own food from our own soil. The knowledge for conservation agriculture, provision of nutritious meals and financial support from Rise Against Hunger has boosted our morale. This is what it means to lift someone and empower a community and a country to understand and replicate compassionate love.”World Food Day began as a way to help bring awareness to the issue of hunger across the world, and it continues to be a day full of hope for the future. Now more than ever, we must come together to help families recover from the COVID-19 crisis, and develop sustainable solutions to ensure communities everywhere have access to nutritious food. To celebrate World Food Day, Rise Against Hunger is hosting a virtual event, which is free to attend!Please join us for our World Food Day event, “Hour of Impact” to hear impact updates from our CEO and founder, watch as volunteers nationwide come together to package nutritious meals for distribution worldwide, and support our continued COVID-19 relief efforts.

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.