World Hunger Day: What It Is and How You Can Get Involved

on May 16, 2025

Today — May 28 — is World Hunger Day, an annual day focused on raising awareness and encouraging action to end world hunger. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, almost 700 million people face hunger globally, making this an issue of critical importance. Everyone deserves consistent access to the food they need to live a healthy life — and together, we can mobilize to eradicate hunger. That’s what World Hunger Day is all about! Keep reading to learn more about the annual holiday and how you can get involved.

World Hunger Day’s History and Purpose

World Hunger Day was started in 2011 by The Hunger Project to bring attention to the global food crisis. The organization recognized the importance of collective action and the power of many coming together to address food insecurity, making it a key focus of the holiday. Over the past 14+ years, millions of individuals, organizations, corporations and governments have participated in World Hunger Day, making it vital for advocacy and community engagement in the fight to end hunger. Through action and awareness, World Hunger Day has helped increase funding for food assistance, encouraged volunteering with hunger relief organizations like Rise Against Hunger, supported agriculture development projects and empowered communities globally.

Global Hunger’s Causes and Ways to Address It

Taking action to address hunger is important — as is learning about the critical issue. While there are many root causes of hunger, there are three main contributors to food insecurity and malnutrition: conflict, climate change and economic downturns. Through the focus areas of our work (nutrition, education and economic empowerment), we address these root causes by providing urgent food for people facing hunger right now and implementing sustainable agriculture and income-generating projects for long-term solutions. The Food and Agriculture Organization reports that rural communities are disproportionately affected by food insecurity, with 32% of adults living in rural areas globally affected in 2024.

Rates of hunger vary by region, too. Africa, Asia, and Oceania are the three regions with the highest rates of food insecurity. But hunger also impacts people in cities, towns and villages around the world, making it truly a global issue. Food insecurity doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. Every community affected by food insecurity faces its own challenges related to availability, access, utilization and/or stability of food. That is why a keystone to Rise Against Hunger’s work is coming alongside local leaders in the communities we serve, empowering them to harness the strengths of their communities to tackle their food and nutrition security challenges.

How YOU Can Get Involved This World Hunger Day

To achieve food security for all and make zero hunger a reality, it is important to grow the movement and bring together as many people as possible. There are many ways that you can get involved, both on World Hunger Day and throughout the year. Make a difference in the work to end hunger by:

Hosting a meal packaging event. Come together with your business, church, civic organization, school or other group to assemble nutritious meals with Rise Against Hunger. These meals are shipped to provide urgent nutritional assistance to communities across the globe.
Donating. Your support enables Rise Against Hunger to serve people facing hunger globally today and work with communities to implement long-term food security solutions.
Fundraising on social media. On Facebook and Instagram, you can host a fundraiser on behalf of Rise Against Hunger. Set a donation goal and then encourage your friends and family to donate to help end hunger. When your followers give to your fundraising campaign, you’re supporting brighter futures for people around the world!
Spreading the word. Talk to your friends and family and share resources (like this blog!) to inform others about this important issue! When more people know about food insecurity, it encourages action and helps grow the movement to end world 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.