One-year-old Mohammed and his family live in the Qa’atabah district of Yemen, near constant conflict that has killed and injured civilians and impeded access to essential goods and services for the past seven years. When volunteers from the Yemen Emergency Food Assistance (YEFA) III program first met Mohammed, he was 14 months old and suffering from severe acute malnutrition — a life-threatening condition that requires urgent treatment.

With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, Global Communities designed the YEFA III program to help children like Mohammed and his family receive food and nutrition support as well as hygiene education to reduce hunger and illness.

In line with Global Communities’ approach to emergency response, YEFA programming started with a focus on the distribution of food baskets to vulnerable households through a voucher process. The program then evolved and expanded to integrate nutrition sessions for targeted households to address widespread malnutrition issues. Phase three of YEFA expanded further in scope to provide a referral mechanism for severe acute malnutrition and moderate acute malnutrition cases like Mohammed’s.

Under YEFA III, nearly 40 volunteers trained in community health and nutrition (CHNVs) helped promote wellness and healthy eating in the community while also screening children under five and pregnant and lactating women for malnutrition.