The work with the poor overall would be impossible without food aid distribution. It is only on the basis of responding to families' plain, basic needs that you gain the credibility to involve these overwhelmed families in a step towards broader, sustainable social development. In these extreme conditions, only food aid can raise basic health and mobilize the most deprived to overcome their family problems, so enabling them to participate in their own development. Food assistance encourages communities to take responsibility at a local level; it contributes to the improvement of basic infrastructure and gives warning of major food deficiencies among the very poor. Especially in the case of street children and children disadvantaged by war, food is the single prerequisite that makes education, training and other self-improvement possible.
Food aid can make an earner of a street child, stop middlemen from exploiting the poor, support training and education, help develop sustainable agriculture, create jobs and show that the poor have in the the capacity to take control of the own lives.
What is the response to major food deficits that developing countries are increasingly going to face without falling back into a vicious circle of perpetual aid?