Emergency Food Security and Livelihoods

When crisis strikes and children are at their most vulnerable, Save the Children is there. Our Emergency Food Security and Livelihoods (EFSL) team helps families meet their basic needs and protect their livelihoods before, during and after a crisis. Working with local communities, we help families create lasting, positive change for themselves and their children.

In an emergency, food security and livelihood programs are critical to saving people’s lives and livelihoods. Immediately following a crisis, Save the Children provides vulnerable families with resources to meet their immediate needs and restart their livelihoods through cash and voucher programs that enable families to purchase the items they need and prefer from local markets, giving dignity of choice and ensuring that local markets are revitalized.

Droughts, economic crises, conflicts, floods and other kinds of shocks often prevent vulnerable families from having enough food and earning enough income to meet their basic needs and to continue minimal investments in their livelihoods. Without EFSL assistance during a crisis, families are forced to make short-term decisions to survive, such as withdrawing children from school to enter the labor force and selling assets that have long-term negative consequences.

ESFL activities are tailored to local conditions; through assessments and analyses, Save the Children designs interventions that take into account immediate needs of families, seasons, livelihoods, risks and markets to design strategic responses that minimize the likelihood of food insecurity and further disruption of livelihoods. We focus on interventions that help to ensure families have access to income and savings throughout the year – through the lean season and in times of crisis – so that they are able to meet their essential needs at all times.

Program Highlights

Overall in 2018, the EFSL team reached 685,984 individuals, 481,853 of which were children.

• In Borno, NE Nigeria, the EFSL team reached 383,986 individuals with cash transfers in areas most critically affected by conflict. 302,133 of those served were children under 18 years of age.
• In Yemen, where 13 million people are at risk of starvation, including millions of children, the EFSL team supported 98,304 individuals in 2018 with food and voucher transfers that allowed families to receive life-saving food commodities.
• In Colombia, where an alarming escalation of violence in neighboring Venezuela has caused millions of families as well as unaccompanied children to cross the border into Colombia in search of food, safety and shelter. Save the Children is implementing a multi-purpose cash program to meet the immediate needs of Venezuelan migrants.