Country Projects: Jordan

Overview

In 2007, a group of concerned Jordanians worked with the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development (JOHUD) to create the Jordanian Alliance Against Hunger (JAAH) under the sponsorship of Her Royal Highness Princess Basma bint Talal. JAAH, with support from JOHUD, is looking at ways to address food security throughout Jordan.  Food banking was identified early on as a key strategy for that effort.

In addition, the government’s school feeding program provides breakfast for only about 50 percent of the nation’s school-aged children, and officials were recently forced to eliminate milk from the menu because of cuts in funding.

GFN’s Involvement

We initiated discussions in Jordan in 2007 as part of a regional conference on how national alliances can address the problem of food insecurity. When the Jordanian Alliance Against Hunger, other NGOs and government agencies decided to collaborate to make food banking in Jordan a reality, they chose to leverage existing infrastructures already in place to meet the needs of the Iraqi refugee population in Jordan. GFN provided food banking concepts, technical information and advice regarding best practices.

To help expand hunger relief programs in place for school children, we chose to include Jordan in our commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. We are working with JAAH and the food bank to supply food to approximately 45,000 students—the other 50 percent of the nation’s children—who are not served by the government’s school feeding program and to restore milk to the menu.

Progress

The Jordan Food Bank was launched in March 2009. A public event marked the exciting endeavor and included representatives of the national and Amman municipal governments, the private sector and the NGO sector.

Learn more about the Jordanian Alliance Against Hunger.