Food Security and Livelihoods

Fostering resilience and catalyzing local food systems change benefiting the most vulnerable.

Food Security and Livelihoods

Fostering resilience and catalyzing local food systems change benefiting the most vulnerable.

Highlights

> 90%

Globally, more than 90% of area programs funded by World Vision’s U.S. donors include food security, livelihoods, and/or poverty reduction interventions.

$265 million

We distributed $265 million worth of commodities (about 208k metric tons) and vouchers benefiting children and families across 20 countries in FY23.

10x income increase

In our THRIVE program, household incomes are now nearly 10 TIMES what they were initially.

We contribute to eight of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) through our food security and livelihoods interventions. We partner with Indigenous peoples, research institutions, and private and public sector stakeholders to address the root causes of vulnerability and risk in the poorest communities around the world.

Our food security and livelihoods focus also contributes to World Vision’s global commitment to sustainable child well-being outcomes:

Children are well nourished and free from hunger.
Families have adequate and resilient livelihoods, income, and assets.
Families and children have reasons and resources to be in school.
Adolescents have hope and skills for a productive future.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13 & 15

For more than 70 years, World Vision and our partners have supported vulnerable communities, families, and individuals to address the root causes of poverty through long-term development solutions. As fragile contexts continue to grow within many low- and middle-income countries, we have increased our focus on locally led solutions, private sector collaboration, and systems-based approaches. As such, our food security and livelihoods programs sit at the intersection of food and market systems, livelihoods, resilience, and social and behavior change to achieve child well-being. Building upon our global expertise in natural resources management, we are expanding our investments in climate action with an emphasis on adaptation. We promote gender equality and social inclusion — with a special focus on women’s economic empowerment — across our programs. We also actively embrace the role of faith identity as a catalyst for social cohesion and sustainable outcomes.

Food Security & Livelihoods Subsectors

Inclusive Food and Market Systems Development

World Vision promotes both nutrition and economic outcomes that benefit the most vulnerable. Working across food supply chains, food environments, and consumer behavior strategies within local systems, we strengthen inclusive markets and integrate poor producers and marginalized communities into market systems — all with the goal of building resilience. We link groups of farmers with input suppliers and buyers of produce, using models such as the Inclusive Local Value Chain Development approach and Savings for Transformation. We work with people living in extreme poverty to build the minimum assets and capacity needed to participate in pro-poor value chains using our Ultra Poor Graduation Model.

Our program experience and research analysis show that these approaches improve access to markets and profitability in rural value chains and economically uplift communities and poor households. Nevertheless, as COVID-19, climate, and conflict increasingly affect the most vulnerable communities and unravel some of the development gains, we recognize that more needs to be done to foster community and system resilience and reinforce sustainable outcomes. We seek to expand the impact of these approaches, particularly in relation to improving household nutrition, achieving women’s economic empowerment, and strengthening resilient market systems outcomes.

Inclusive Food and Market Systems Development FAQS:

What are some examples of World Vision’s work in this area?

World Vision’s Nobo Jatra resilience food security project, funded by USAID and implemented in southwest Bangladesh with Winrock International and World Food Programme, works with more than 20,000 smallholder farmers to strengthen the agri-business sector and improve household incomes. Using the Integrating Extremely Poor Producers Into Markets field guide, Nobo Jatra facilitated partnerships among key national-level vegetable seed suppliers and agrodealers, retailers, and mobile seed agents. We worked with suppliers to address the limited access and use of inputs at the community level by holding farmer clinics within community markets, fostering farming as a business for smallholder farmers, and enabling market access through connections with national-level vegetable aggregators. Through these efforts, farmer incomes have grown by 45%. Farmers now have the ability to diversify their livelihoods by including commercial fruit farming and high-value commercial crops such as watermelons and sunflowers.

In Ethiopia, our Strengthening PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR 1) project (2016 to 2021), funded by USAID and implemented with CARE and the Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara, supported the Ethiopian government’s vision of enhanced resilience to shocks and improved livelihoods, food security, and nutrition for vulnerable rural households in Amhara, Oromia, and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region. The project worked to improve access to agricultural markets to increase income, productive assets, and equitable access to nutritious food for vulnerable women, men, and youth. In the last two quarters of FY20, we partnered with 11,102 farmers to improve access to markets. In just six months, 12,222 SPIR participants (60% of them women) accessed agricultural resources and young hens from SPIR-supported agrodealers and breeders. SPIR linked agrodealers to large supply companies, including higher quality concentrate feed (poultry, cattle, and dairy feed) suppliers, and recruited village agents to help market this feed in more remote locations. The SPIR 2 project (2021 to 2026) builds upon this foundation to further support the resilience and food security of vulnerable Ethiopian households.

In Cambodia, the Commercialization of Aquaculture for Sustainable Trade (CAST) project, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food for Progress program, aims to grow and develop freshwater aquaculture. CAST aligns with the Royal Government of Cambodia’s Strategic Plan for Aquaculture Development in promoting increased access to improved Cambodian inputs, such as fish food. The project is strengthening links in the value chain: hatcheries, fish producers, and buyers/distributors. Cambodian producers will benefit from increased access to, and confidence in, high-quality fish grown in Cambodia and produced and handled with proper standards.

Where can I find resources and publications on this topic?

Climate Change and Environment

Climate change is one of the foremost issues of this century and on the international development agenda. It adversely and disproportionally affects those living in the world’s most vulnerable communities and is one of the underlying causes of extreme poverty. Climate-related shocks and risks exacerbate inequalities impacting children’s health, education, and long-term development outcomes. Nearly 1 billion children across the globe are living in countries with an extremely high risk of climate and environmental hazards, shocks, and stresses. The Paris Climate Agreement, adopted at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference, is a binding international treaty committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming. The agreement provides a framework for action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as provide financial support to developing countries. It is a landmark commitment to move toward net-zero emissions and achievement of the SDGs.

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report from February 2022 observed that human-induced climate change resulted in widespread adverse impacts on and loss of ecosystems, people, settlements, and infrastructure — including drought, floods, fire, and extreme heat on land and in the ocean. The report also underscored that the extent and magnitude of climate change impact are greater than what was reported in the 2014 assessment.

Climate impacts are being felt profoundly in every sector and across all regions. World Vision believes that:

Climate change and environmental degradation are major drivers of extreme poverty, malnutrition, inequality, and child vulnerability, and we will use our resources and experience to address it.
World Vision is committed to responding to climate change, as the crisis puts additional stress on the most vulnerable children, women, and others living in poverty. We aim to ensure their participation in decision-making for climate action and inclusive development that will restore and protect the natural resources that they depend on for their livelihoods.

World Vision approved its first Environmental Stewardship Management Policy in March 2021 in response to systemic challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation. The policy ensures that all World Vision programs, operations, facilities, and advocacy contribute to improved natural environments while minimizing negative impacts that may affect the well-being of the children, families, and communities that we serve.

We promote farming practices that ensure smallholder agriculture is productive, sustainable, nutrition-sensitive, and resilient. Across World Vision, approaches used in programs include: sustainable land management and land restoration, notably Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration; soil and water conservation (watershed management); small-scale irrigation and rainwater harvesting; agroforestry; conservation agriculture; disaster risk reduction; and climate smart agriculture.

Climate Change and Environment FAQS:

What are some examples of World Vision’s work in this area?

Enhancing Nutrition, Stepping Up Resilience and Enterprise (ENSURE), was a six-year World Vision–led consortium funded by USAID Food for Peace, aimed at building food security and resilience among rural communities in Zimbabwe, and improving the nutrition of women of reproductive age and children under 5. In Zimbabwe — as in many countries across Africa — building the resilience of rural livelihoods to climate-related shocks and weather extremes is critical for communities to achieve and sustain well-being. ENSURE operated in semi-arid and arid areas prone to recurrent climate-related shocks that resulted in widespread losses of assets, crop failures, and severe food insecurity. In addressing these challenges, the ENSURE program focused on enhancing nutrition, improving household incomes through agriculture productivity and marketing, and improving community resilience to food insecurity. Key among the community resilience interventions were small dams, small-scale irrigation schemes, and community gardens. This study has shown that these assets have provided an alternative pathway to ensuring food security and strengthened livelihoods for vulnerable individuals and families.

Where can I find resources and publications on this topic?

Food Security and Nutrition

Food security is achieved when people have sustained access to sufficient food, allowing them to meet their dietary and income needs and lead productive and healthy lives. The convergence of shocks driven by conflict, COVID-19 (along with other economic or health shocks), and climate change deeply impact food security. Change in food availability — caused by price hikes, food shortages, and crop failure — can tip large parts of a population into food insecurity, resulting in decreased well-being across the social ecology. Nearly half of all deaths among children under 5 are the direct or indirect result of undernutrition, which is linked to food insecurity. Poor households typically spend about two-thirds of their income on food, making them especially vulnerable to rising food prices. And while global food supplies will need to support an additional 3 billion people by 2050, meeting these needs will depend more on efficient and equitable food systems than on increased food production.

Global evidence has shown that integrated, multisectoral approaches contribute to improved nutrition outcomes among children and families. In our work to improve food security and nutrition in communities around the world, we leverage our project models and approaches in the areas of inclusive food and market systems development, women’s economic empowerment, natural resource management, behavior change communication, and water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Food Security and Nutrition FAQS:

How is World Vision seeking to improve interventions for maximum impact?

World Vision uses research, program quality improvement, and a decision-making approach that adapts to changing contexts to maximize the impact of our programs. Our multiyear global research agenda, along with project-specific learning agendas, provide the framework for using monitoring data and testing/assessing the most promising combinations of interventions, as well as identifying the most impactful entry points for action within food and market systems. For example, World Vision and our partner ODI recently completed a study of interventions addressing pathways out of poverty in coastal Bangladesh. Likewise, we are conducting a trial in Ethiopia that tests behavior change communication techniques that may increase sensitivity and awareness around nutrition in our programs.

What are some examples of World Vision’s work in this area?

Mozambique: The Educating Children Together project, funded by the USDA McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Nutrition Program, is working to improve literacy among school-age children and improve health and dietary practices in the Nacaroa and Muecate districts of Nampula province in Mozambique. Through the project, 9,656 children under 2 and 17,849 pregnant women have been reached with community-level nutrition interventions. More than 6.2 million daily school meals (breakfast, snack, and lunch) have been provided to 85,561 school-age children, helping to reduce hunger, keep children in school, and improve their attentiveness in class.

South Sudan: In South Sudan, World Vision is implementing a multiyear emergency food security project called Accelerating Recovery and Resilience in South Sudan (ACCESS) in Upper Nile State. This state is one of the most affected by food insecurity, with at least 50% of the population facing crisis (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification 3) or worsening acute food insecurity. We are building the resilience and capacities of vulnerable communities to absorb and adapt to acute shocks and chronic stresses. The project aims to accelerate crisis recovery and bolster resilience while providing essential complementary services that leverage existing Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme, UNICEF, and other USAID humanitarian assistance programming. Farmers are being trained in seed multiplication, mother-to-mother support groups are establishing demonstration garden plots, and households are receiving cash assistance and livestock (sheep and goats) — all with the goal of increasing household food security and nutrition.

Bangladesh: In the Teknaf and Ukhiya subdistricts of Cox’s Bazar District in Bangladesh, we partnered with the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance to conduct activities that support forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals, as well as host community households. Project interventions worked to improve the food security and nutrition status of refugees and host communities through fresh food vouchers, a cash transfer program, gender mainstreaming, livelihood capacity building, income-generation assistance, Savings for Transformation, and community-level nutrition interventions. We also aimed to support the communities’ capacity to withstand future shocks by creating productive and beneficial assets.

DRC: In Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the Kalehe territory, we are partnering with USAID and Mercy Corps to improve the food security, nutrition, and economic well-being of 16,800 vulnerable households in nine health areas. Because of this project, 88,993 people (83,965 women, 5,028 men) now have access to food. We support families with permagardens to help diversify their diet and income streams. These home gardens have provided families with a year-round supply of nutritious vegetables. The project also supports local rabbit production and has distributed 7,366 rabbits to 2,445 women to promote the consumption of animal proteins. Religious leaders are trained and actively engaged in family planning and Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) sensitization. Faith leaders have been central partners as facilitators of social and behavior change, especially when addressing sensitive health and social subjects like family planning, changing cultural norms, and vaccination. Mothers and fathers are trained as leaders on MNCH topics and actively share their knowledge with 10 to 15 women each in their neighborhoods. This includes skills in cooking demonstrations, MNCH, and hygiene. Training has also been given to strengthen the identification and early referral of malnutrition cases to health facilities.

Where can I find resources and publications on this topic?

Sustainable Livelihoods and Resilience

Although the world has made dramatic gains in ending extreme poverty over the last half century, the impact of poverty on children’s development remains devastating. Millions of people — especially mothers — living at or below the poverty line face many challenges in their quest to provide a better future for their children.

For more than 20 years, these numbers were steadily declining. COVID further tipped the scales, pushing as many as 132 million more people into food security, with combined and deep impacts on both food and health systems across the continent. The pandemic also led to a decline in income opportunities, lost livelihoods, diminished purchasing power, and limited access to basic food and services. But the end of 2022, an estimated 2.3 billion people faced moderate or severe food insecurity. Families with children have felt these affects most acutely.

While effective economic empowerment initiatives can catalyze people to move out of extreme poverty, shocks to their lives and livelihoods, such as illness, disaster, or conflict can throw them backwards, with severe effects on the most vulnerable. Those living in extreme poverty not only need the tools to move themselves up the economic ladder out of poverty and toward sustained economic well-being; they also need a strong foundation of resilience to remain out of poverty when shocks hit. With only seven years left to reach the SDG’s target to end extreme poverty by 2030 (SDG 1), we must work faster and smarter to ensure that no one is left behind.

We will continue to leverage and innovate our programmatic approaches, including our Building Secure Livelihoods model, to build resilience at household and community levels and in food and market systems. The emerging literature on livelihood resilience stresses the need to expand our analysis beyond conventional economic outcomes, such as assets, income, or agricultural productivity, to consider less tangible elements, such as social capital, self-efficacy, and empowerment.

Sustainable Livelihoods and Resilience FAQS:

What are some examples of World Vision’s work in this area?

According to the World Bank, two out of three people living in extreme poverty are smallholder farmers. A lack of access to information, resources, and skills leads to feelings of powerlessness and low self-worth, which often perpetuate the cycle of generational poverty. In response, World Vision developed Transforming Household Resilience in Vulnerable Environments (THRIVE), a comprehensive set of practical and sustainable solutions that help farmers overcome the underlying causes of extreme poverty and vulnerability in farming.

Over the past eight years, World Vision has implemented and tested our THRIVE programming model for building secure livelihoods across 27 programming areas in five countries. Shifting from ad hoc livelihood interventions, the THRIVE approach tested a comprehensive set of practical, sustainable, and sequenced solutions.

A rigorous research and learning agenda embedded in THRIVE pilots, carried out in partnership with Technical Assistance to NGOs (TANGO) International, has enabled World Vision to establish an evidence base on the effectiveness of this approach to lift rural families out of poverty. We have learned that, among THRIVE components, a core set of readily scalable interventions enables the vulnerable to progress out of poverty and journey toward sustained economic well-being. These interventions include World Vision’s Empowered Worldview training, financial inclusion services such as Savings for Transformation groups and elements of microfinance, and value chain development.

A recent study by TANGO in THRIVE intervention areas in Tanzania found that incomes are now nearly 10 times higher than at baseline, and families used the money in ways that improved their quality of life: their children’s education, housing improvements, medical care, and investments in their businesses. The study also found that 95% of farmers had diversified income sources (increased from 44% at baseline), 95% of THRIVE farmers handled shocks without negative coping strategies, and food insecurity decreased by 51%.

In Cambodia, World Vision partnered with USAID and Save the Children on the Child-Sensitive Livelihood Assistance project to create a safe and nurturing family and community environment for children impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. World Vision collaborated with Hagar Cambodia, This Life Cambodia, Safe Haven, and First Step Cambodia to provide livelihood support that included livestock raising, small business training and the provision of startup materials, and vocational skills training (including motor repair, tailoring, coffeemaking, and hairdressing) to eligible households in Siem Reap province and the city of Phnom Penh. The project also engaged community partners to provide ongoing technical coaching support, mentorship, and home visits to project participants.

Where can I find research and publications on this topic?

Empowered Worldviews: Assessing the Role of Behavior-change Programming on Mindsets and Livelihoods in Zambia (CPAN/ODI and University of Zambia, 2021)
Independent Study of Program Efficacy, THRIVE Tanzania (TANGO, 2021)
Pathways Out of Ultra-poverty: A Mixed Methods Assessment of Layered Interventions in Coastal Bangladesh (CPAN/ODI, 2022)
COVID-19 school closures and adolescent mental health: Evidence from Mozambique | IFPRI : International Food Policy Research Institute
The Relationship Between Psychosocial Interventions and Child Well-being in Zambia (CPAN/ODI, World Vision, 2022; Child Indicators Research, 16, pages 395–420, 2023)
Sustaining Escapes from Ultra-poverty: A Mixed Methods Assessment of Layered Interventions in Coastal Bangladesh (Chronic Poverty Advisory Network, July 2022)

Women's Economic Empowerment

Through the SDGs, the international community has come to a shared understanding that secure, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth will not be realized without the full participation of women in economic activities. In World Vision programming, advancing women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has been an essential component to promoting economic prosperity and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI). Women’s empowerment is also known to be a source of resilience to shocks.

World Vision’s WEE framework has four key domains for promoting WEE: economic advancement, access, agency, and equitable systems. Within these, we work to promote women’s access to opportunities, resources, and services, and to increase women’s well-being, manageable workloads, and decision-making skills and opportunities. We take a hybrid approach, working directly with women while also working with households, communities, institutions, and food and market systems to promote an enabling environment where women can thrive.

Women’s Economic Empowerment FAQS:

How will World Vision continue to prioritize WEE?

WEE interventions that we will continue to expand include the promotion of leadership capacity building and leadership opportunities for women, male engagement in caregiving, women’s financial literacy and inclusion, and digital inclusion. For example, for digital inclusion, we are promoting digitized savings groups to help address the persistent problem of the digital gender divide. Through our Finance Accelerating Savings Group Transformation (FAST) approach (implemented through World Vision’s microfinance subsidiary, VisionFund), we are providing relevant financial products, such as loans and insurance to qualified savings groups whose members otherwise have great difficulty accessing these services.

Our research priorities for WEE include understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment and important factors such as gender bargaining power; faith and empowerment; male engagement for women’s empowerment; financial and digital inclusion; and the care economy, which includes unpaid care work and involvement in paid work.

What are some examples of World Vision’s work in this area?

In our USAID-funded Enhancing Nutrition, Stepping Up Resilience and Enterprise (ENSURE) program in Zimbabwe, one key focus area was to promote improved income and livelihoods for women. We worked with women farmers, many of whom were at a subsistence level when they started. We provided training (literacy, numeracy, improved agricultural techniques, marketing) and facilitated connections with local businesses, financial providers, and buyers. With increased knowledge and financing, the participants provided products to restaurants and hotel chains. When the women began selling high-quality batches in large quantities, World Food Programme even began purchasing from them.

At the same time, none of this would have been possible if we had not also worked at the household level with the women’s husbands/partners to encourage equitable gender norms, fathers’ caregiving for children, women’s agency and ownership of their own assets, and shared housework and decision-making. In this program, we saw household-level net revenue increase by 200% for goats, 95% for poultry, 23% for groundnuts/round nuts, and 500% for sorghum. Additionally, after three years, men showed a 54% to 64% increase in engagement in household chores and childcare. This significantly eased women’s time commitment in unpaid care work, allowing them to increase their time spent in rest and income-generating activities. In addition, couple’s joint decision-making rose from 30% to 82%.

World Vision worked with 21,000 women in the USAID-funded Nobo Jatra development food security program in Bangladesh. Nobo Jatra seeks to improve gender-equitable food security, nutrition, and resilience in southwest Bangladesh. Using the ultra-poor graduation model, the project trained women in literacy, numeracy, financial management, and vocational skills, and provided cash grants of $188 in startup capital. The women also participated in Savings for Transformation groups, a World Vision savings group model, which assisted them in financial literacy and accessing financial services. The women now earn steady incomes averaging $54 to $75 a month — a sizable amount in this area — where before they had none.

Where can I find research and publications on this topic?