Food Aid
Australia provides food aid to Bangladesh to support the poorest people of the country to overcome food insecurity. Australian food support in the form of wheat, fortified atta (flour) or micronutrient biscuits reaches more than 900,000 people of eleven districts of the Northwest Bangladesh.
The food aid program is implemented by the government of Bangladesh with management and supervision support from WFP. The majority of food support are women who head households with no other incomes. Food support is provided through Vulnerable Group Development (VGD), Integrated Food Support (IFS) and School Feeding Program (SFP). The program is not about one-off, short term relief, but to create sustainable changes in the lives of the ultra poor through poverty reduction. The VGD program provides assistance to 123,000 ultra poor female-headed households in North-western Bangladesh over a two-year periode and aims to help them achieve food security and develop income generation skills. After two-years women are linked to micro-credit services of NGOs. The IFS program provides earning opportunities to approximately 30,000 participants- mostly women- and engages them in development projects, including disaster mitigation. The School Feeding Program aims to improve the nutritional intake of children, increase school enrolment and attendance, and improve the attention of the students. Each day more than 160,000 primary school children receive 75 gms of micronutrient biscuits produced from Australian wheat.
• Contribution (2005-06) - 78,000 MT of wheat (bilateral 58,000; multilateral 20000). Total value of the food aid is $23 million.
• Duration - Ongoing
• Partners: WFP, Government of Bangladesh, NGOs