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Matthew 6:11
Give us this day our daily bread…
John 6:35
I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
The use of food as a resource, and the issues surrounding food, are of concern to the entire World Vision Partnership, and thus require consensus and broad-based mechanisms that ultimately advance the Partnership’s strategic directions and ministry impact on those we serve.
Our History of Food Use
 World Vision’s understanding of food and food resource use has paralleled the evolution in World Vision’s development thinking. Food aid was first utilized in small stand-alone institutional and welfare assistance interventions as an end in itself. For many years the World Vision Partnership was hesitant to use food as one of the main components of its ministry.
Faced with the drastic famines and suffering following Africa’s Sahelian drought of 1982-84, World Vision was compelled to intervene with emergency food assistance in Mali, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) and Chad. Initially food assistance was channelled through local West African Churches and later managed directly by World Vision. Large-scale emergency food relief programmes were initiated in Poland (1984-86), Zaire (1984), Ethiopia (1985) and Mozambique (1988).
These programmes provided emergency and therapeutic feeding to save lives and later transitioned addressing basic needs through mother and child health care, nutritional supplements; seeds & tools distribution and food-for-work for recovery and rehabilitation.
 In 1986 the World Vision Board of Directors approved the “testing of the appropriateness and effectiveness of using food aid as a resource in support of development”. In 1987, under a USAID-financed Programme Enhancement Grant, World Vision formed the Africa Development Team with the mandate to enhance the capability of World Vision to handle food as a resource in the development process.
By the early 1990s, World Vision possessed a small cadre of food programming and management professionals. Multi-year food programming in support of sectoral development was being implemented in numerous countries. Food applications included: food for agriculture/seed multiplication; storage/price stabilization; risk abatement; asset protection/creation and food for education/training. Innovative approaches to food monetization, exchange and barter were pioneered in Mozambique, Kenya and Mali.
FPMG Mandate and key food aid policies
FPMG is the World Vision International unit concerned with the management and support of food aid programs in World Vision program areas. FPMG has been given an official mandate to discharge its duties in the area of food aid management in the partnership. This is through the provision of a clear mandate which is supported by policies in areas closely related to that mandate. Documents relating to the mandate and the food aid policies may be accessed here below.
Food Programming & Management Group (FPMG)
World Vision International
5 Main Avenue, Florida, Johannesburg
P.O. Box 2794, Florida 1710 Gauteng, South Africa
Phone: +27 (0) 11 671 1300
Fax: +27 (0) 11 472 8967
www.worldvision.org
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