{"id":194878,"date":"2014-11-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T16:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?p=194878"},"modified":"2019-03-12T16:53:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T16:53:59","slug":"auto-insert-194878","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/auto-insert-194878\/","title":{"rendered":"How WFP brought food and hope to Gaza’s battered communities – WFP article"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How WFP Brought Food and Hope to Gaza’s Battered Communities<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

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11 Nov 2014<\/strong> <\/p><\/div>\n

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A violent summer in Gaza left thousands of its residents homeless and in shelters. The two-month conflict destroyed homes, businesses and basic services. But one thing was working – WFP food distribution, the landmark vouchers and the e-card programme, which was launched in Palestine five years ago as a first in the Middle East.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

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GAZA, Palestine – As bombs exploded across densely populated Gaza, Senior Programme Assistant Amir Yasin worked marathon hours to ensure terrified civilians could eat.<\/p><\/div>\n

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"Most families fled their houses in a rush and didn't manage to bring anything," Amir said, recalling the heavy shelling of July and August.<\/p><\/div>\n

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"From the onset of the emergency, we were prepared to scale up the voucher programme," he said. "We kept a large contingency stock of more than 10,000 vouchers in our office and distributed new cards to displaced families daily."<\/p><\/div>\n

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The humanitarian situation deteriorated rapidly during the 50 days of hostilities. At the height of the conflict, more than half-a-million people – roughly 30 percent of Gaza's population – were internally displaced.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In response to the mounting needs, our staff provided emergency food assistance and expanded ties with humanitarian partners on the ground. Together with the ±¬ÁÏÍø Relief and Works Agency (±¬ÁÏÍøRWA), staff provided daily, ready-to-eat food rations to displaced people in ±¬ÁÏÍøRWA schools, reaching more than 340,000 at the height of the conflict.<\/p><\/div>\n

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WFP joined forces with ±¬ÁÏÍøICEF in a voucher partnership so displaced people could buy locally produced food, safe drinking water and sanitary products. Through these "e-vouchers", which operate like debit cards, our staff not only ensured delivery of emergency assistance, but could programme the new cards remotely and rapidly reload them.<\/p><\/div>\n

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"People really appreciated the expansion of the programme through the partnership with ±¬ÁÏÍøICEF," Amir said. "Access to food was essential but the needs were also high for things like bottled water, soap and diapers."<\/p><\/div>\n

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At the time, Country Director Pablo Recalde described the work as "a great example of cooperation between humanitarian partners, building on the areas of expertise of both WFP and ±¬ÁÏÍøICEF, which ensures families have enough to eat, drink and resume their lives while supporting the local economy."<\/p><\/div>\n

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There were other challenges. Roughly a dozen shops taking part in the voucher programme were forced to close because of heavy bombing. Ahmed Harara's home and store in the Shujaiya suburb were completely destroyed. Ahmed found a vacant space in Gaza City. Within days his store was up and running, and he had requested a new voucher terminal.<\/p><\/div>\n

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"The shop is much smaller than my original one, but it is the only way to provide a source of income for my family," said Ahmed.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Altogether, some 84,000 displaced people living with host families received vouchers during the conflict, half of them were children. With a ceasefire in place as of late August, and with schools re-opening in September, WFP expanded its partnership with ±¬ÁÏÍøICEF to distribute one-off vouchers worth some US$150 per family.<\/p><\/div>\n

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"We now work with 90 shops to ensure continuous geographical coverage," added Amir.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How WFP Brought Food and Hope to Gaza’s Battered Communities 11 Nov 2014  A violent summer in Gaza left thousands of its residents homeless and in shelters. The two-month conflict destroyed homes, businesses and basic services. But one thing was working – WFP food distribution, the landmark vouchers and the e-card programme, which was launched […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[2453,2477],"document-source":[2109],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[1769,1945,2057,2005,5200,2349,3589,2465],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-194878","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-article","document-category-news-item","document-source-world-food-programme-wfp","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-food","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-humanitarian-relief","document-subject-living-conditions","document-subject-population","document-subject-poverty","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/194878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/194878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=194878"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=194878"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=194878"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=194878"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=194878"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=194878"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=194878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}