Download Current Issue - SAIS

Hungry
1 Billion
By Odette Boya Resta
Bologna Center graduate addresses
the problem of hunger with a perspective
that goes beyond sound agricultural policy
What do agriculture, risk, conflict, and maternal
and child health have in common? All
have an impact on the problem of world
hunger—and they all intersect to some
degree. Just ask Bologna Center graduate
Brenda Lee Pearson B’89, ’90, who works
for the United Nations World Food Programme
(WFP), an agency at the forefront of integrating good nutrition
practices into humanitarian food assistance.
Pearson is global deputy
coordinator of REACH,
a new U.N. interagency
program that tries to solve
the nutrition needs of the
world’s most disadvantaged
and vulnerable children
and women. In this role
she seeks to harmonize the
activities of the nutrition
divisions of four U.N. agencies—WFP,
UNICEF, the
Food and Agriculture Organization,
and the World
Health Organization—to
62 SAISPHERE
The
World’s
determine what catalysts are
needed to implement effective
public policy.
There are about 1 billion
hungry people in the world
because of natural disasters,
armed conflicts, scarce
resources and unsustainable
livelihoods. Pearson
explained these problems
are exacerbated because of
weak governance and the
breakdown of local institutions,
“preventing countries
from helping themselves.”
Over the past 20 years,
she worked with the U.S.
Department of State and
the U.S. Agency for International
Development
(USAID) in Asia and the
Middle East; was one of the
founders and original staff
of the International Crisis
Group, covering Kosovo
and Macedonia; and served
as president of an international
consulting firm based
in Rome and Washington,
D.C. At different stages, she