Syrian Donation Drive

It was still early in the life of Charity Hackers Association, but a good deed should not wait when the purpose is clear. Together with the World Food Programme, CHA launched a donation drive for the situation facing the Syrian people.

The humanitarian situation in Syria continued to deteriorate as fighting went on, leaving more and more people destitute. The World Food Programme was struggling to meet the urgent food needs of more than five million displaced people inside Syria and in neighbouring countries. Food operations were severely underfunded, forcing WFP to reduce the level of assistance it provided to refugees across the region.

WFP works towards three main goals in its Syria response: delivering food to people affected by conflict, to malnourished children and to pregnant and nursing mothers; providing emergency food assistance; and offering tailored programmes focused on relief and recovery, school feeding and nutrition.

With new donor support, WFP raised the value of the electronic vouchers used to assist extremely vulnerable Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon to an average of US$21 per person per month — 80 percent of the intended voucher value, after assistance had been cut to roughly half in previous months.

WFP reaches more than four million people every month inside Syria and provides electronic food vouchers to up to 1.5 million refugees in neighbouring countries. Through the e-card system, WFP injected more than US$1 billion into the local economies of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, helping create thousands of jobs in food retail.

In 2015 critical funding shortages forced WFP to cut assistance for vulnerable Syrians inside and outside the country. Syrians in despair began taking extreme measures to cope, including returning to Syria or leaving host countries altogether; those in the most difficult situations could not move at all because they could not afford to.

How you can help

• ·Sustainable, predictable funding keeps food reaching families every month instead of in bursts.
• ·A single voucher of roughly US$21 covers a person's food for a month.
• ·Sharing a campaign costs nothing and reaches donors we never could.