Food For The Poor

Food For The Poor (FFTP) ministers to spiritually renew impoverished people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Established in 1982, FFTP's goals are to improve the health, economic, social and spiritual conditions of the men, women and children we serve. Food For The Poor raises funds and provides direct relief assistance to the poor, sometimes by purchasing specifically requested materials and distributing them through the churches and charity organizations already operating in areas of need. Since its founding FFTP has distributed more than 96,000 tractor-trailer loads of aid to the poor. We have also built more than 92,000 housing units for people desperately in need of adequate shelter, and completed more than 2,965 water projects that provide lifesaving water and sanitation to hundreds of thousands of people in need.

Our purpose is to bring urgent relief to vulnerable families affected by poverty. We designed our assistance programs to empower our beneficiaries to become self-sufficient and ultimately inspire them to build strong communities so their members can help each other. We constantly seek simple, efficient strategies to fight hunger and poverty without adversely impacting our aid recipients or their country. Food For The Poor holds preserving human dignity and caring for those in need as a universal value. Our short-term focus is to demonstrate that poverty is not inevitable and that people can break out of poverty with the proper assistance. We partner with subject matter experts, local and international NGOs, universities and colleges, churches, and service organizations to achieve our goal.

Goal One: FFTP has shifted from building things to building lives, emphasizing an integrated approach to development. We address poverty's material, social, and spiritual dimensions. Our goal is to not only mitigate vulnerabilities (e.g., distribute food, drill wells, build schools) but also to build capacity (e.g., provide training, foster local leadership, enhance agricultural practices).

Goal Two: FFTP’s 2025-2027 Strategic Plan, SHARPEN, aims to improve holistic support for those impacted by poverty and build capacity for sustained growth. This involves investing in systems, processes, expertise, and professional development. Recent initiatives include establishing an office in Honduras and hiring a strategy execution team and a new Chief Information Officer.

Goal Three: FFTP has a newly defined overarching goal: to facilitate paths out of poverty and into transformed lives. To achieve this, we decided to focus our relief and development work across ten programmatic areas. Of these, our strategic plan prioritizes five key sectors: hunger relief & food security, community development, education, agriculture, and WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene).