Child hunger · Do

Treat a starving child. About $100.

Five minutes each: give monthly where the evidence is strongest, from $5 a month, or pay for a starving child’s treatment, about $100 to $200 a child.² Then call Congress before 11 December. Treatment is a carton of peanut paste and a health worker who measures the child’s arm each week. Undernutrition is part of the cause in about 2.2 million young children’s deaths a year.¹ Step one gives to the programs with the strongest evidence, which prevent the illnesses that kill malnourished children. Every action carries a label for how well it’s proven.

If your family needs food now: dial 211, free and at any hour, or find a food bank by ZIP. Apply for SNAP through your state: you hear back within 30 days, and may get benefits within 7 if your household has almost no money. Enter your ZIP for your state’s application.¹⁷

En español: ¿Su familia necesita comida hoy? Llame al 211, gratis y a cualquier hora, y pida atención en español. Puede solicitar SNAP (cupones de alimentos) en su estado: le responden en 30 días, y puede recibir beneficios en 7 si su hogar casi no tiene dinero.

What’s true Keep it going

The whole thing

Give monthly where the evidence is strongest.

GiveWell’s top charities save the same children malnutrition kills, in the same places, for about $3,500 to $5,500 a life by its estimate. strong Bed nets cut child deaths 17% across trials; seasonal malaria medicine prevents about three-quarters of cases; vitamin A cut deaths 12% across trials, though the largest single trial found no clear effect.³⁴ Where to give.
5 minutes · from $5 a month
Or pay to treat starving children specifically.

If what you want is to pay for a child’s course of peanut paste and a health worker, give to a treatment program GiveWell has vetted. moderate The treatment protocols are trial-tested for recovery; the claim that treatment prevents death rests on older observational data, and GiveWell rates these programs a little below its top charities. Per life saved, the two steps cost about the same.³⁵ Where to give for treatment.
5 minutes · any amount
Call your senators before December 11.

Government funding runs out on 11 December 2026. The President proposed ending Food for Peace, and the House bill cuts it by a quarter. The Senate hasn’t acted.⁶ weak: moves some votes The script is below.
5 minutes · $0

Pick the day and time you’ll do step one:

Near you

Enter your ZIP code and this page adds the steps that depend on where you live: your state’s own programs and laws, and the finders that take a ZIP. The code stays in your browser, like the ticks.

Where to give

If you want the most lives per dollar

GiveWell → choose Monthly at the top → pick the Top Charities Fund or All Grants Fund → $5 minimum. Paying by bank account saves card fees on larger gifts. Its four top charities: vitamin A supplements, seasonal malaria medicine, vaccine incentives and bed nets.³

Know the caveats. GiveWell published its own modelling corrections in March 2026: its vitamin A estimate may have been about a fifth too high. The biggest vitamin A trial, a million children in India, found no clear effect on deaths, while the pooled trials found one. GiveWell shows its working; that is the point of giving there.⁴

If you want to treat malnourished children

GiveWell funds these programs too, and rates them a little below its top charities, with more uncertainty.⁵

ALIMA (Niger, Chad, Cameroon and more) → choose Monthly and an amount. The next step asks for a phone number. A medical charity that runs its own treatment trials and publishes audited accounts. GiveWell funds its malnutrition work: in 2024 it rated the Chad program below its bar, then funded Chad again in 2025.⁵⁷
Taimaka (northern Nigeria) treats malnutrition and nothing else, at about $94 to $132 per child depending on which of its pages you read; GiveWell’s figure is $105. The clearest line from your dollar to a child. No monthly option on its page; three stars from Charity Navigator; GiveWell’s estimate puts it just under its own funding bar, with a renewal decision pending. Its 2023 and 2024 tax filings each flag one related-party deal: a $100 loan from its president for its first deposit, still owed. Charity Navigator counts two independent members among its four voting board members, below the three it expects of a charity this size.⁵⁷
International Rescue Committee, monthly. Its simpler treatment method uses about a third less therapeutic food. Monthly gifts go wherever IRC needs them, not only to nutrition, and the organisation cut a third of its staff after the 2025 aid cuts.⁷
Want to see the box? UNICEF USA prices one carton of therapeutic food, one child’s whole course, as a $47 “Inspired Gift”. The money itself is unrestricted; UNICEF spends it where the need is greatest.²

Action Against Hunger’s monthly page was on this list. It came off because the gift supports its “programs in over 50 countries”, the page reports no outcomes, and its line that “90% of your donation goes to help those in need” doesn’t match its audited 2025 accounts (82% to 87%).⁷

What it costs, honestly

$47 buys one carton: 150 packets of peanut paste, a child’s six-to-eight-week course.²
About $100 to $200 is the full treatment, with the health worker who measures the child’s arm each week and the clinic it happens in.²⁵
About $4,200 to $5,500 is the cost of one death prevented, by GiveWell’s figures for Taimaka and the IRC. Most treated children would have survived anyway: it takes about 40 children treated at Taimaka, and about 25 at the IRC, to prevent one death. Taimaka’s own estimate is lower, $1,500 to $4,500.⁵
Cost of preventing one child's death, by whose estimate
Step 1: GiveWell's top charities, by GiveWell$3,500 to $5,500
Step 2: treatment at Taimaka and the IRC, by GiveWell$4,200 to $5,500
Step 2: Taimaka, by its own estimate$1,500 to $4,500
Green: GiveWell's estimates, which put the two steps at about the same cost per life. Gray: the charity's own, lower figure. All three are kept, not averaged.³⁵

All three numbers are true at once.

Call before December 11

Find your senators at senate.gov and your representative by ZIP at house.gov. Or call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and ask for the office.
Say who you are, where you live, and one specific thing. Staff say a specific request and a local reason matter most. In two field experiments, state legislators who heard from constituents, or were shown their district’s views, voted more in line with them.⁸

Hi, I'm a constituent in [ZIP]. I'm calling about the spending bills due December 11. Please keep global nutrition funding at least at this year's $165 million, and keep emergency food assistance at least at this year's level, with the flexibility to buy food near where it's needed. The President proposed eliminating Food for Peace and the House bill cuts it from $1.2 billion to $900 million. These programs pay for the food that keeps severely malnourished children alive. Where does the Senator stand?

Why “flexibility”: Food for Peace buys American-grown food and must ship at least half of it on American ships. Government auditors found that buying food in the region cost about a third less in Africa and Asia and arrived months sooner, and one study links in-kind US food aid to longer conflicts, a finding another study disputes.⁹ The ask is to keep the money and spend it better, not to keep the shipping rule. Your House member votes until 3 January even if they lost on 3 November.

Closer to home

Hungry children in the US are a different problem from the starvation above. About 751,000 American children lived in homes where a child went short of food in 2024.¹⁰ What fixes that is income, SNAP and school meals. Helping people apply for SNAP raised enrolment in a randomised trial.

Help one family enrol in SNAP or WIC. moderate: strong per hour In a trial with 30,000 older adults, information plus help with the application tripled SNAP enrolment, from 6% to 18%. In a USDA study of 9,811 households, six months on SNAP went with about 9 to 10 points less food insecurity among children. WIC reaches only about half of the people eligible.¹¹ Food banks run enrolment help: Feeding America’s network assisted 312,000 SNAP applications in the year to June 2025. Ask your local food bank for its SNAP outreach volunteering, not the sorting line.
If your state skipped Summer EBT, ask it not to. moderate The summer grocery benefit for school-age children cut the worst child food insecurity by a third in its randomised evaluation; a dozen states still don’t take part. New York does.¹²
Give the food bank money, not cans. weak: small, short studies Programs run in pantries improved clients’ diets in the small, short studies that exist. A dollar goes further than a can: most of what the network moves is donated, and money pays to sort, store and truck it. “Every $1 provides at least 10 meals” is a leverage ratio, not a purchase.¹³ In New York, City Harvest; by ZIP, Feeding America.

What happens after

If you give to GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund, GiveWell grants it on a rolling basis, all of it except payment fees, and emails you once your money is committed. Since May 2022 every grant from the fund has gone to malaria nets, malaria medicine, vitamin A or vaccination incentives. None has gone to malnutrition treatment.¹⁸
If you give to a treatment program, a health worker measures each child’s upper arm and hands the family sachets of peanut paste, one or two a day under the IRC’s simplified protocol. Taimaka describes six to ten weekly visits. In the IRC’s work in Mali, 92% of more than 27,500 children treated recovered; in a separate study of 420 who recovered, 26% relapsed within six months.¹⁴¹⁹
You won’t get a child’s name or a photo. None of GiveWell, ALIMA, Taimaka or the IRC runs a sponsorship scheme; the money pays for a program. A $47 “Inspired Gift” is unrestricted too: it doesn’t buy that carton for one child.²¹⁹
To stop a monthly gift: GiveWell, in its donor portal under “My Recurring Donations” or by writing to donations@givewell.org; the IRC, by calling 1-855-973-7283 or writing to partners@rescue.org. ALIMA doesn’t publish steps; write to info.usa@alima.ngo.²⁰
After you call, the office records it. Offices mostly answer only their own constituents. Their reply goals are for letters and emails: under a week for a stock answer, two to four weeks for a new one, and many wait months. The reports say nothing about replies to calls. Your call still counted.²¹

In other languages: 211 answers in 180 on request, and Feeding America’s food-bank finder has a Spanish version.¹⁷

Questions people ask

Does $20 a month do anything?

Something real, and small. $240 a year is about 4% to 7% of one life saved, whichever step you choose: GiveWell’s figures put its top charities at $3,500 to $5,500 a life, and treatment at about $4,200 to $5,500 a death prevented. Given once a year to Taimaka, it pays for about two children’s treatment at GiveWell’s $105 cost per child.³⁵ That’s why it’s a step and not the whole thing.

Doesn’t aid get stolen?

Some does, mostly in war zones. Clinic treatment is harder to steal than bulk food: a health worker measures each child and hands the packets to that family. GiveWell pays for independent checks on the programs it funds. The honest limit is relapse: in one IRC study, about a quarter of recovered children fell back within six months.¹⁴

Is calling Congress worth it?

Less than you’d hope, more than nothing. Most members have already decided. For the ones who haven’t, 84% of congressional staff say calls have some or a lot of influence, and two field experiments with state legislators agree.⁸ It costs five minutes, and the deadline makes this month unusually good timing.

Which charity, really?

On today’s evidence, GiveWell rates its top charities a little higher than malnutrition treatment. By its figures a life saved costs about the same either way; the evidence behind the top charities is stronger.³⁵ If you want your money to treat a starving child specifically, ALIMA runs the trials and publishes its accounts, and Taimaka draws the clearest line from a dollar to a child. Either is a good choice; pick one and make it monthly.

Isn’t this really war and politics?

Mostly, yes. Conflict is the main driver of famine, and money can’t open a siege. But treatment runs in conflict-hit places, and for a child who reaches a clinic it works: IRC reports 92% recovery in Mali.¹⁴

Isn’t it getting better on its own?

It was. Deaths of children under five fell 63% between 1990 and 2023.¹⁵ Then donors cut health aid in 2025, and the Gates Foundation’s modelling projects 2025 as the first year this century that child deaths rose.¹⁵ The trend is real. It isn’t automatic.

Should I volunteer at an orphanage abroad, or fund one?

No, on the evidence. A Lancet commission found that donations and volunteers help keep children in institutions, when many have a living parent, and that short volunteer stays add to the instability of their care. It asks donors and volunteers to fund family and community care instead.¹⁶

With an AI beside you

Paste these into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. Ask it to check today’s facts; this page will age.

My ZIP code is [ZIP]. Find my two senators and my House representative, check today's status of the FY2027 State Department and Agriculture spending bills, and write me a 45-second phone script asking them to protect global nutrition and emergency food assistance funding. Use only facts you can link to.

I can give [amount] a month to help children with severe malnutrition. Compare GiveWell's top charities with the malnutrition-treatment programs GiveWell funds (ALIMA, Taimaka, IRC) on cost per child and evidence. Tell me where your information might be out of date.

I live in [city, state]. Find the nearest food bank or benefits-enrolment program that takes volunteers to help families apply for SNAP or WIC, with its sign-up page, and tell me what the training involves.

Send this page to one person:

Sources

UNICEF and UN IGME, 4.9 million children under five died in 2024, 18 March 2026 primary; Black et al., Maternal and child undernutrition and overweight in low-income and middle-income countries, The Lancet, 2013: undernutrition linked to 45% of child deaths research. The 2.2 million applies that 45% share to today’s total, so it’s a modelled estimate. An autopsy-based study at seven sites found malnutrition in 39.5% of deaths (BMJ Global Health, December 2024) research.
UNICEF USA, Inspired Gifts: nutrition, checked 5 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures; Taimaka, home and donate pages, checked 5 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures.
GiveWell, Top charities, updated October 2026, and how it estimates cost-effectiveness. evaluator
Pryce et al., Insecticide-treated nets for preventing malaria, Cochrane, 2018 (child mortality down 17%) research; Meremikwu et al., Intermittent preventive treatment for malaria in children living in areas with seasonal transmission, Cochrane, 2012 (clinical malaria down about three-quarters) research; Imdad et al., Vitamin A supplementation for preventing morbidity and mortality in children from six months to five years of age, Cochrane, 2022 (deaths down 12%) research; Awasthi et al., the DEVTA trial, The Lancet, 2013 (one million children; no significant effect on deaths) research; GiveWell, Our mistakes, read 5 Nov 2026 (the March 2026 corrections) evaluator.
GiveWell grant reviews: IRC malnutrition treatment, April 2024 ($215 per child, about $5,500 per death averted) and Taimaka, November 2024 ($105 per child; about nine times as cost-effective as cash, against a bar of ten) evaluator; GiveWell’s grant page on ALIMA in Ngouri and N’Djamena, Chad (February 2024: rated below its bar) and its 2025 metrics report (an October 2025 grant to ALIMA for Niger and Ngouri, Chad), read 6 Nov 2026 evaluator; the treatment protocols: Bailey et al., the ComPAS trial, PLOS Medicine, 2020, and Cazes et al., the OptiMA trial in the DRC, The Lancet Global Health, 2022 (alive, recovered and not relapsed six months on: 72% against 63%) research. Taimaka’s own figures: $94–132 per child, $1,500–4,500 per death averted charity’s own figures. Our arithmetic from GiveWell’s figures: its Taimaka grant, $4,787,985 for an estimated 1,128 deaths averted, is about $4,245 a death, or about 40 treatments at $105; its IRC figures, about $5,500 a death at $215 a child, are about 25 treatments. $240 a year against $3,500 to $5,500 is 4% to 7%. our arithmetic
Congressional Research Service, R49343, Agriculture and Related Agencies: FY2027 Appropriations, 10 September 2026 (Food for Peace: $1.2 billion in FY2026, eliminated in the President’s request, $900 million in the House bill, no Senate markup), R48956, 13 October 2026, and R48564, 17 February 2026. primary
ALIMA, financial transparency (audited 2025 accounts) and 2025 annual report charity’s own figures; Charity Navigator, Taimaka (three stars), read 5 Nov 2026 evaluator; Taimaka’s latest filing (Form 990 for 2024; no audited statements on file), read through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer; its 2023 and 2024 filings, read 6 Nov 2026 (Schedule L lists one loan in each year: from Justin Graham, president, purpose “DEPOSIT INTIAL FUNDS” [sic], $100, balance $100; no grants to or business with insiders) primary; and Action Against Hunger’s audited 2025 statements from its own site, 5 and 6 Nov 2026 primary; Action Against Hunger’s donate and Lifeline pages, read 6 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures; 82% of its 2025 expenses on programs, 87% counting program support our arithmetic; the IRC’s fall from 18,000 to 12,000 staff in the year and a half after the 2025 aid cuts, reported by Semafor, 22 September 2026 news.
Congressional Management Foundation, Citizen-Centric Advocacy, 2017 primary; Bergan and Cole, Call your legislator: a field experimental study of the impact of a constituency mobilization campaign on legislative voting, Political Behavior, 2015, and Butler and Nickerson, Can learning constituency opinion affect how legislators vote? Results from a field experiment, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2011 (field experiments on state legislators) research.
US Government Accountability Office, local and regional procurement, 2009, and cargo preference, 2015 primary; Nunn and Qian, US food aid and civil conflict, American Economic Review, 2014, and Christian and Barrett, Spurious regressions and panel IV estimation: revisiting the causes of conflict, Economic Journal, 2024, which questions the method behind that finding (contest kept) research.
USDA Economic Research Service, Food security key statistics, updated 30 March 2026. primary
Finkelstein and Notowidigdo, Take-up and targeting: experimental evidence from SNAP, 2018 (30,000 older adults; enrolment 6% to 18%) research; USDA, Measuring the effect of SNAP participation on food security, 2013 (9,811 households; 8.6 to 10.1 points, associations the authors say are not causal estimates) primary; USDA, WIC eligibility and program reach, 2021 data primary; Feeding America’s 312,000 assisted SNAP applications are its own count, for its fiscal year to June 2025 charity’s own figures.
USDA, Summer EBT demonstration evaluation (very low food security among children down about a third) primary; Food Research & Action Center, Summer EBT state participation (12 states not taking part), read 5 and 6 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures; USDA’s Summer EBT page for New York (“Summer EBT is Available in Your Location”), read 6 Nov 2026 primary.
Feeding America, home and donate pages, read 5 and 6 Nov 2026 (the “at least 10 meals” conversion is its own: pounds of donated food per dollar of its costs, at 1.2 pounds a meal; its audited statements confirm pounds and values, not meals; donated goods are most of what it moves) charity’s own figures; An et al., A systematic review of food pantry-based interventions in the USA, Public Health Nutrition, 2019 (14 studies, 5 of them randomised; interventions “modest in scale and usually short in follow-up”) research.
International Rescue Committee, simplified protocol research summary, July 2023. charity’s own figures
UN IGME 2024 child mortality report (12.98 million deaths in 1990, 4.78 million in 2023); Gates Foundation, Goalkeepers 2025 report (4.6 million child deaths in 2024, projected about 4.8 million in 2025). primary
Goldman et al., Institutionalisation and deinstitutionalisation of children 2: policy and practice recommendations for global, national, and local actors, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2020, part of a Lancet Group Commission research; ReThink Orphanages, on volunteering and donations, read 5 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures.
211, About 211 (24/7, confidential) and its mental-health help page (180 languages on request) primary; United Way, which runs 211.org, on its 211 facts page (a free service), read 6 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures; USDA, SNAP eligibility (a decision within 30 days; benefits possibly within 7 for households with very little money), read 6 Nov 2026 while USDA was still updating it for new legislation primary; Feeding America, food bank finder primary.
GiveWell, Top Charities Fund (granted on a rolling basis; the grants listed), read 6 Nov 2026. charity’s own figures
Taimaka, home page (six to ten weekly visits) charity’s own figures; GiveWell, Donor illusions, 2009, on sponsorship; and the four organisations’ own pages, read 6 Nov 2026, none of which offers sponsorship primary.
GiveWell, more information about donating; IRC, monthly giving; ALIMA, US donation FAQ, read 6 Nov 2026. primary
Congressional Management Foundation, Citizen-Centric Advocacy, 2017, and Building Trust by Modernizing Constituent Engagement, 2022. primary

The Congress section goes stale on 11 December 2026. Charity costs and GiveWell’s estimates change every year; GiveWell’s renewal decision on Taimaka was pending when we checked.

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