Placing first in a recent Feed the Future photo contest, a photo from NCBA CLUSA’s Feed the Future Senegal Yaajeende project exemplifies how innovations and community-led development are ending hunger around the world.
Across the globe, millions of people strive to feed their communities and beyond. Feed the Future and its partners are empowering farmers, entrepreneurs, scientists, parents and others with knowledge and innovative tools to build a more food-secure world.
This year’s winning photos tell the inspiring story of how Feed the Future and its partners around the world—and here at home in the U.S.—are helping millions of people lift themselves, their families and their communities out of poverty and hunger.
In the first place photo (left), Ms. Khady Ndongo (in purple) organizes a “Passing on the Gift” ceremony. Ndongo is a community nutrition volunteer in the Matam region of Senegal. The ceremony depicted brings together women from her village and a neighboring village to present goats to a member of a Debbo Galle (competent mothers) Group.
Through this process, families that receive livestock through the Feed the Future Senegal Yaajeende Project, implemented by a consortium led by NCBA CLUSA, pass on offspring to other targeted families in their community. This allows recipients of a productive asset to assist others and share resources, encouraging resilience across the community.
The Passing on the Gift activity is led by Heifer International, NCBA CLUSA’s partner in Yaajeende. Communities working with the project saw over a 30 percent reduction in child stunting and lifted 56,000 people above the poverty line despite recurrent drought and weather crises. NCBA CLUSA continues to expand that work in Senegal with a new Feed the Future Project—Cultivating Nutrition.
These pictures give us a glimpse into that progress and the lives and communities that are being transformed: farmers connecting to markets, women and young people seizing opportunities to build a better future, children getting a better start on life with good nutrition, entrepreneurs launching new ventures, research and innovation leading to marketable solutions, and economies and global stability growing.
Check out all the top photos on Feed the Future’s Flickr account.