The world changed forever on December 26, 2004. That was the day that an earthquake of mammoth proportions struck, which in-turn triggered a tsunami that ravaged the coastlines along the Indian Ocean. Entire coastal villages and towns from Africa to Asia were literally swept away. Millions of survivors were left behind in the wake of this devastation, having lost their families, friends, homes and communities.

A number of relief agencies quickly rallied their resources to help the victims of this natural disaster. One of them was the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations’ frontline agency in the fight against global hunger, which, within a matter of days, launched a massive emergency operation.

According to those inside WFP, this disaster presented the humanitarian organization with one of its most logistically challenging operations in its 40-plus year history. WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency each year providing food aid to an average of 90 million people including 56 million hungry children in more than 80 countries.

What made this situation more unique than others was that WFP and its partners would be working in locations where much of the infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed; where many areas are remote and cut off from normal supply lines, and where existing capacities were already stretched thin.

> Read the complete article