Bacha Hida, a 55 years old house wife, resident of Village Badalai, Tehsil Wara Mamund, Bajaur Agency, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is the beneficiary of the World Food Programme’s Food for Returnees initiative

 In October 2008, Bacha Hida was living a quiet and content life in Badalai village of Wara Mamund Tehsil in Bjaur Agency with her one son and two daughters. Her husband would visit here regularly from Karachi, where he was the proud owner of a small shoe shop. Her son, 24 years old, was studying hard in college in the hope of improving the family’s financial situation. Military operations started in August 2008 in various parts of Bajaur, but since her village was untouched, Hida had decided to stay at home continuing with the life she and the women before her knew so well.

 But as they say, life is what happens to you when you are making other plans: on one fateful day oin October 2008, an air strike hit her house and she lost everything – her home, her husband, her life. She had nowhere to go and the family was forced to seek refuge first in a camp in Samar Bagh in Lower Dir and then later in Jalozai camp.

 The responsibility of running the family business was put on the only son who left immediately for Karachi to carry on at his father’s shop. The survival and care of the family fell on Hida. She

registered with the Social Welfare Department and started receiving monthly support to cover her basic needs. The food assistance in the package was provided by WFP and contained basic, fortified, nutritious items like wheat flour, pulses oil, sugar, salt, and High Energy Biscuits.

“You can live without shelter but you cannot live without food. The food we got was the best help. It is during this experience that I realized the value of food, “explained Hida as she recalled her time in the camp, “At that time I had felt that as women we could not go out and earn, so the food from WFP saved us from hunger and starvation.” But as time passed, Hida realized that she would have to head the family, since her son could not return as frequently as her husband did as it was taking him time to learn the running of the business.

 As the Military operation successfully ended, Hida and other families like her returned to what was left of their homes. The first task at hand was to arrange for food and then fix the homes for shelter. WFP had established Humanitarian Hubs to meet the food needs of the returnees. “When we came back, I had thought I would have to scavenge for food, but WFP continued to provide us food from Inayat Qilla,” Hida explained. With the food need taken care of Hida, could now concentrate on rebuilding her life. As a woman, the means available for Hida to provide for her family were limited, but the WFP rations allowed her to care for her family with dignity.

 Hida, injected with a resilience to get her life back to normal, worked with her daughters to rebuild her home. It is not perfect, but each crocked corner is proudly shown by an empowered Hida who now has plans to build a proper kitchen and small kitchen garden to meet her immediate food needs. Hida still receives food from the new Chenagai Hub which will allow her the time and resources to fulfill her plans.

Nutrition Story: (606 words)

“She lies on the bed all day. I even have to give her water… She is supposed to take care of me, not the other way around!” Nooran’s mother-in-law screamed while shoving the bag of bones that Nooran had become towards her mother.

 Nooran, 35 years old, weighed only 23 kg when her mother brought her to the nutrition camp. She could hardly move or speak. Her beautiful eyes shone with a desperate plea for help.

 She had been a healthy nineteen year old girl and had finished her matriculation examination successfully, when she married Zulufqar. Laughing and working hard at her chores, Nooran faced the hardships of poverty and social pressures with a sense of humour not rare in this part of the country. Her home and her children were her priority.

Zulufqar worked in the fields earning a meagre wage. The little money he brought in was all used up on providing for his 12-member family. Over the years, the growing prices of food and his stagnant earnings meant less food for the family. Nooran sacrificed her health to ensure that her children did not stay hungry. Added to this, the last three of her eight pregnancies were miscarriages, each resulting in severe blood loss.

 “It was very difficult. I could not do anything. I was not me,” Nooran told us as she recounted her state.

 Nooran, once so full of life, was now fighting for life itself. Every day was a losing battle. It was a blessing in disguise when her in-laws sent her home. Her mother immediately took her to the hospital that referred her to the nutrition camp run with the support of the World Food Programme. There she was registered with a mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) of 13 cm. She was immediately provided with two bags of Wheat Soya Blend, oil and vitamin A tablets. Nooran also told them she was not producing any milk for her two-month-old baby.

After just one month of treatment, Nooran has already shown a tremendous recovery. She can now sit up and even walk a little. But what she is the most glad about is that she has started producing milk again.

“The doctor told me about the importance of breast feeding, so now my baby will grow up to be a film star because he will be big and strong,” Nooran says with a laugh.

She now weighs 25kg and has a MUAC of 13.5. Her progress is slow, but steady. Unfortunately, Nooran is one of the over 70% in Sindh who are food insecure and one of hundreds of thousands suffering from malnutrition. Through its Community Based Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) intervention, in support of the Government’s efforts, WFP is providing assistance in screening malnutrition patients and treating acute and moderate malnutrition patients through locally produced supplements. It is working in the most affected districts of Pakistan with a special focus in Sindh.

Even as Nooran asks us to give her medicine to treat her, the only thing she requires is food. Lack of adequate food leads to malnutrition; if everyone got enough food there would be no malnutrition. It is one of the easiest ailments to prevent and cure, yet the most prevalent.

 There is enough food for everyone; we just have to make sure that it is accessible to those who most need it.

Cash for Work story: (395 words)

“WFP Cash-For-Work (CFW) project supports me in my earnings. It helps me to do more for my family. Now with support of small amount in addition of my routine earning, I am able to feed my family and build a small shelter for my family,” shared Mr. Niaz beneficiary of WFP Cash-for-work project at Village Khair M Shar, UC Dhalyar, District Sanghar. He said, “We have been living in this village for many years but a Kacha Road was never built. The ground level of our village is lower than the land of area, therefore, water comes easily in our village. During the last floods our village was under water for more than 3-months with 3-4 ft of water. We all stayed for 4-months on the canal side. Now that we have built the Kacha Road, the village is safer from both sides and also we have clean way/road.”  

 Mr Niaz is disabled due to Polio. He was enrolled as a vulnerable beneficiary, who would be provided with cash unconditionally. He could not work manually on the Kacha Road schemes under CFW project, but was responsible for providing drinking water to other people of the village during work in progress. They all worked for 15-days on the Kacha Road scheme at the village side. The project involved people constructing a new Kacha road where previously one did not exist with their own tools such as spades, soil diggers, shifting bowls.

 Mr. Niaz is 36 years old and lives with his 34 years old wife, 2 sons aged 10 and 8 and his 64 year old mother. The flood destroyed his small, single-room, Kacha house. He was earning his livelihood by driving a rickshaw on rent and obtained daily share from profit. During the flood, the owner of the rickshaw took it back for his own movement during emergency. As a result Mr Niaz lost his only source of earning. He usually earns PKR 100-150 daily as a share profit after all rickshaw expenses. He lived nearly 4 months without the rickshaw resulting in miserable conditions with little to eat and almost no cash for other needs. Participating in the WFP CFW project helped him till he was once again able to use the rickshaw for share labour with the owner as previously.  

Emergency Response – Floods story: (443 words)

Communities in Pakistan battle with mother-nature

A third successive year of flooding in Pakistan has hit millions of people already suffering from high food prices, malnutrition and poverty.

PAKISTAN - A third successive year of flooding in Pakistan has hit millions of people already suffering from high food prices, malnutrition and poverty. The new flooding has caused the deaths of nearly 400 people, destroyed houses and damaged hundreds of thousands of acres of standing crops.

While Punjab province is slightly better off in terms of resources, Sindh and Balochistan have been hit hard. Malnutrition rates and levels of food insecurity here are alarming, according to the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) of 2011 conducted by Government of Pakistan’s Health Ministry.

Many of the districts affected were already struggling to recover from the 2010 and the 2011 floods. The communities have now become more vulnerable after this latest shock. At the request of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has already started food distributions to tens of thousands of affected people in Sindh and Balochistan.

A one-month food ration is being distributed to about 10,000 families in Jacobabad district of Sindh and to 5,000 families in each of two districts of Balochistan - Jaffarabad and Naseerabad. The WFP food basket is made up of fortified wheat flour, pulses, vegetable oil and iodized salt, as well as High Energy Biscuits and specialized ready-to-use supplementary food for small children, designed to protect against malnutrition, particularly during times of crisis.

"This is the first time we are getting such type of assistance from anyone. No one has distributed anything here,” said Khan Muhammad, who had just picked up a food ration for his family at a WFP distribution point, established at the Notal Police Station in Naseerabad. “My house was destroyed when our area was flooded and I have been struggling to rebuild it for the past two years. I do daily labour for my livelihood.”