ELCA World Hunger

Donation: $100,000

ELCA World Hunger works with a variety of partners overseas to support smallholder farms and their communities. Our donation will allow ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) to introduce more sustainable farming practices, improve water availability, provide carbon-efficient cookstoves, reduce deforestation, and increase local food security in more than 60 countries.

Why They're Climate Smart

Almost 80 percent of the world's food is produced on small farms, where parents and children often work side by side. These family farms are a way of life — key sources of food and income — for much of the world, including the US.

Yet half of the world's roughly 800 million undernourished people live on such farms. Without access to adequate resources and training, farming families can often go hungry. Desperation, lack of education, and lack of resources cause these farming families to work in a way that contributes needlessly to climate change. Violent and unpredictable weather can quickly turn a hopeful season into a hungry one, driving many farmers to migrate elsewhere and contributing to instability and economic challenges in neighboring countries.

As the impact of climate change increases, the world's food supply will become more insecure and hunger in many regions will rise, which is why one of ELCA's goals is to help family farms in developing countries build resilience while reducing their contribution to climate change. In Haiti and Ethiopia, practices to address soil erosion have reduced the need for petroleum-based fertilizers and decreased deforestation related to the burning-off of vegetation. In more than a dozen nations, improved water availability, the use of cookstoves adapted to burn fuel from local vegetation waste, and the introduction of seed banks and seed-sharing have not only increased biodiversity and resilience, but also reduced methane production, deforestation, and transportation costs.

You can learn about and support ELCA by donating.

Read our interview with ELCA World Hunger.