World Food Programme – WFP/PAM

About the Company

WFP school feeding programme is considered to be the largest food safety net in the country. Every school day, WFP delivers hot meals to close to 300,000 children each day across more than 1,000 schools, mainly public, throughout the country. WFP is working with the Government to develop a nationally-owned school feeding programme. An important milestone was reached in 2016 with the signature of the first National School Feeding Policy, drafted in collaboration with WFP.

WFP buys local whenever possible to support local agriculture and markets in line with Government plans to revitalize the agriculture sector as a means of tackling food insecurity. WFP launched a Home-Grown School Feeding programme which uses exclusively local products from smallholder farmers. WFP buys locally an average of 800 metric ton of food annually for its Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, supporting national agriculture in line with the Government’s rural development priorities.

WFP Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) initiatives address immediate food needs through cash transfers, while promoting the building or rehabilitation of assets that will improve long-term food security and resilience. In Haiti, WFP focuses on disaster risk reduction activities (e.g. watershed management, rehabilitation of key infrastructure and canal irrigation), involving communities, Government and partners in the design of integrated multi-sectorial and longer-term operational plans.

One of WFP’s top priority is to support the Government to develop policies that promote food security and nutrition objectives. In recent years, WFP supported the Government in updating the National Policy and Strategy for Food Sovereignty, Security and Nutrition, and developing the National School Feeding Policy. Currently, WFP is facilitating the development of the National Social Protection Policy. Since 2014, WFP has also been working with the Government to develop a national database to better identify, target and register vulnerable households (SIMAST).

To help mitigate the impact of future disasters, WFP works to ensure that stocks of emergency food are on standby in the right locations before the start of the hurricane season, which runs from June to November each year. Emergency stocks pre-positioned by WFP have enabled a swift response to every crisis for the past decade, in coordination with the Directorate of Civil Protection.

WFP is currently providing emergency food assistance to more than 150,000 people who have been affected by a prolonged drought and the deterioration of the economic situation since 2018. WFP is mostly providing cash transfers to allow people to choose how to address their essential needs while also helping to boost local markets. WFP complements this intervention with Social Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) activities with the goal to influence healthy behaviours for better nutrition.