JAM International reaches 72 million meals

Since mid-March, when the World Health Organisation declared the Coronavirus a global pandemic, JAM International has reached almost one million beneficiaries through food assistance and has provided over 72 million meals across all our African countries of operation.

As the pandemic spread across Africa, governments announced lockdown measures with rigid movement restrictions that led to job losses, disruption of livelihood activities and distortion of markets and informal food systems. The worst hit were millions of vulnerable families and especially school children who usually depend on school meals for their nutrition.

Despite challenging operating environments, and in order to prevent this pandemic from becoming a food security emergency, JAM teams have provided emergency food assistance to 934 721 individuals, ensuring continued access to food for children and their families, particularly those experiencing acute food insecurity due to lockdowns and suspension of school feeding (due to widespread school closures).

JAM remains committed to immediate and durable solutions to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our approach focuses on tackling short-term hunger whilst building the capacity of our communities to feed themselves. This approach aligns with our focus of Helping Africa help Itself. While our distribution of 72 million meals has prevented negative outcomes of acute food insecurity (hunger and malnutrition), JAM’s provision of seeds, tools and training in vegetable gardening has assured some durable results and sustainability for affected households.

Innovation in the humanitarian space has seen JAM introducing a ‘state of the art’ mobile-based food voucher application for the delivery of food assistance during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more about this voucher system here: https://jamsa.co.za/covid-19-2/

“JAM is also increasing our capacity for cash and voucher-based programming. Our aim is to proactively contribute to the development and improvement of multi-purpose voucher and cash transfers to meet basic humanitarian needs.” – Ann Pretorius, Global CEO and JAM Co-Founder

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