ReliefWeb

WFP's first Asian corporate partner, LG Electronics, supports WFP's work in Ethiopia via a number of communities called "LGE Hope Villages". In these villages LGE funding is helping nearly 3,000 families (14,500 people) increase their food security and resilience to climatic change.

LGE's support is focused in the Amhara region, one of the most vulnerable areas in the country. It is partly channeled into 'food-for-assets' activities where people work on infrastructure programmes that will make local agriculture more fruitful and sustainable. WFP supplies food rations to these people to support them while they do the work.

These activities are part of the MERET programme (Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transitions to More Sustainable Livelihoods). LGE executives met with WFP's Executive Director Josette Sheeran at the sidelines of the COP 15 Climate Change Conference in December to affirm its continued support for the MERET programme in Ethiopia.

Since 2009, LGE has been providing support, amounting to US$ 1 million dollars, to parts of the Horn of Africa with the goal of increasing their food security and climate change resilience.

LGE was scheduled to travel to Ethiopia and Kenya immediately after COP15 to determine how it can help ensure that crisis turns to opportunity and hope for the Horn of Africa.

In addition to MERET projects, LGE also invests in the future of children, through school meals and related programmes. About 10,000 school children are benefitting in the first year of the partnership from school meals as well as education about health, hygiene, HIV/Aids and the creation of school gardens.