![[URGENT] Your love is desperately needed to save our hungry neighbors!](/sites/default/files/styles/hero_slide_mobile/public/2026-02/RS49004_mob.jpg.webp?itok=6og-aNRn)
She only eats once a day.
Your caring heart beats to help your neighbors who need you. And thank God you're here, because sweet little Tshituka — a toddler living with her mother and family in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — desperately needs your help.
Tshituka is very sick.
Despite how hard her mother Ngalula works, they can only afford one meal a day.
"I don't have the means to feed the children," shares Ngalula. "Sometimes they go to sleep hungry."
A caring and compassionate person like you can help provide the means for mothers, like Ngalula, to feed their starving children. Your gift today to our 2026 Hunger Challenge to Save Lives provides urgently needed food to families like hers.
With her long commute and time-consuming labor, she can only earn around $1.40 a day.
Her children are barely hanging on. They don't eat a bite of food until 7 p.m., just before they go to bed.
Can you imagine? Tshituka and her siblings go all day without even a snack. They eat their only meal right before they go to sleep and start the cycle of hunger and pain over the next day.
Ngalula can only afford to feed her children a simple meal of bidya (pounded root vegetable paste) and soup once a day.
After fleeing their home to escape life-threatening violence, Ngalula and her family now live in Kamonia, a remote mining town in the south of Kasai province in the DRC. Ngalula's husband is away for months at a time working in the diamond mine, leaving her to care for their children alone.
Their country is currently facing a crippling hunger crisis — where nearly 6 million children suffer from lack of food, causing severe malnutrition.
Ngalula has already endured the worst kind of suffering. She's watched her children die from starvation.
Just a few months ago, her son died from anemia — a severe form of malnutrition —despite her giving him her own blood to try to save his life.
"The blood was finished; I gave him my own blood, but he died," said Ngalula. "The [child] who died in Kananga was 3 years and 6 months old. The other one died while fleeing the war due to lack of food. He died when he was 2 years and 6 months old."
You can understand how frightened she must be for her surviving children, especially Tshituka.
Like any doting mother, Ngalula rushed her to the nearest health center, and after the medical staff took Tshituka's measurements, which include height versus weight and mid-upper arm measurements, they confirmed her worst fear - her baby has malnutrition.
She's not getting the proper nutrients her young body needs to grow and thrive.
The clinic prescribed Tshituka with three pouches of Plumpy'Nut for seven days. Packaged in small, durable sachets, each one contains about 500 calories and requires no refrigeration, cooking or clean water — making it ideal for use in remote or emergency settings, like the displacement camps where Tshituka and her family live.
Children can simply tear open the packet and eat it directly, even if they're too weak to chew or swallow solid food.
Tshituka must return to the health center for another screening and will receive another seven-day prescription of Plumpy'Nut. This weekly cycle will continue until her measurements indicate that she has recovered.
Tshituka has been through this process several times, but then she quickly sinks back into poor health when the Plumpy'Nut treatment ends.
She desperately needs a more permanent and sustainable solution ... that's where a loving neighbor, like you, comes in.
Ngalula fetches as much water as she can carry to clean clothes to try to earn a living...but it’s not enough.
Your best gift by March 20 will help us reach our 2026 Hunger Challenge goal of $250,000. You'll be saving hungry children and their families before they die from starvation.
You can help villages like Tshituka's get sustainable solutions for this severe hunger problem. Plumpy'Nut is a helpful fix, but it's only temporary.
When you give to the 2026 Hunger Challenge, you can help provide lasting solutions, like:
- Teaching mothers how to make a hardy porridge sourced from local ingredients instead of being forced to rely on therapeutic foods, like Plumpy'Nut.
- Delivering seeds, tools and training for families to grow their own gardens to harvest their own food to enjoy and sell at market for income.
- Giving those we serve new reasons to hope for a brighter tomorrow and flourishing future.
- And so much more.