Giving Compass' Take:

• Michael Igoe reports that in March 2018 David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, took a more aggressive approach to global hunger. 

• How can funders work with international bodies to reduce hunger? 

• Learn about solutions for hunger in America


David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Programme, has a message for humanitarian leaders who chide him for talking up the role of food insecurity in driving terrorist groups such as Islamic State group, Boko Haram, and al-Shabab.

“We’ll do it your way and get $2 billion. Or we’ll do it my way and get $7 billion.”

Beasley was nominated to lead the United Nations’ food assistance branch by Nikki Haley, United States President Trump’s U.N. ambassador. Both Haley and Beasley are former Republican governors from South Carolina. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Beasley to lead WFP, which reaches 80 million people with its food security services, just under a year ago. He has spent the intervening months coming to terms with the unprecedented scale of crises facing the world’s largest humanitarian agency dealing with hunger.

“The most striking thing, walking into the operation, was how bad it really was around the world. The other thing that was really quite surprising was, the World Food Programme is really an amazing operation,” Beasley said.

While many feared the Trump administration would try to cut funding for WFP — as it did with other U.S. contributions to the multilateral system — Beasley convinced the U.S. government to give more last year, raising their contribution from $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion.

Read the full article about David Beasley's funding strategy for the World Food Programme by Michael Igoe at Devex International Development.