The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has re-launched its Arabic language website (www.wfp.org/ar) as part of its efforts to raise public awareness among Arab-speaking populations about the plight of the world's billion hungry people and WFP's fight against hunger.
The new Arabic website will reflect WFP's work around the world with a special focus on WFP's operations in the Middle East region.
"We hope that the new WFP Arabic website engages more people and especially the young people of the Arab world to join forces with WFP in our global fight against hunger. It will provide users with an interactive experience and many different ways for the public to support WFP," said Daly Belgasmi, WFP Regional Director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
The new user-friendly Arabic website features a cleaner design and more than nine new sections, video and photo galleries, a search engine and a donation page. The re-launched site provides RSS feeds to help journalists keep up with the latest press releases, videos and photos as they are published on WFP.org/ar. It also offers a series of downloadable WFP publications on food aid, policies, hunger and malnutrition and has special sections for celebrities advocating on behalf of WFP.
Nancy Roman, WFP's Director of Public Policy, Communications and Private Partnerships, said global philanthropy was moving from governments to ordinary people: "As the flat world gets flatter, individuals have more power to solve global problems," she said. "This site will allow the more than 200 million Arabic speakers worldwide to engage in the fight against hunger."
There are more than 22 Arabic speaking countries around the world and Arabic is one of the official languages of the United Nations. Development of the Arabic site has been welcomed by WFP staff working in the Arab world.
Besides the Arabic website, WFP's web team is developing new sites in a dozen languages including Farsi, Korean and Russian and has re-launched sites in: French, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish, reinforcing WFP's brand on the Internet. The new language sites play a key role in spreading awareness about the organization and its beneficiaries as well as in raising funds throughout the year, and particularly in times of emergency, to reach the one billion Internet users worldwide.
During 2009, the agency, which is entirely funded by voluntary contributions, raised US $4 billion to assist in the fight against hunger. WFP's largest operations are in the Muslim world, providing food assistance to almost 48 million people annually -- close to 50 percent of the total number of people assisted by WFP worldwide every year.
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About WFP
WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. In 2010, WFP aims to feed more than 90 million people in 73 countries.
WFP now provides RSS feeds to help journalists keep up with the latest press releases, videos and photos as they are published on WFP.org. For more details see: http://www.wfp.org/rss
WFP has a dedicated ISDN line in Italy for quality two-way interviews with WFP officials.
For more information please contact (email address: firstname.lastname@wfp.org):
Abeer Etefa,
WFP/Cairo,
Tel. +202 2528 1730 ext. 2600,
Cell. +20 0166634352
Rana Harb,
WFP/Cairo,
Tel. +202 2528 1730 ext. 2612
Reem Nada,
WFP/Cairo,
Tel. +202 2528 1730 ext. 2610,
Cell. +20 0166634522
© Press Release 2010
