Laura Turner Discusses Support and Recovery Assistance in Sudan

Release date: February 19, 2008 |

After more than two decades of civil war, millions of people throughout Sudan have suffered persistent droughts, food shortages, displacement, diseases, and death.

Laura Turner, a government relations/program officer for the United Nations World Food Programme -- the world's largest humanitarian organization -- will give a talk titled "Beyond Darfur: Support and Recovery Assistance in Sudan," on Tuesday, February 26, at noon in Goucher College's Heubeck Multipurpose Room.

Lunch will be served at this lecture, which is free and open to the public, Reservations must be made by Saturday, February 23, by e-mailing Wendy Belzer Litzke at wendy.litzke@goucher.edu.

Turner has worked for the United Nations since 1994, serving in various locations worldwide. She recently spent two years managing the World Food Programme's relief and recovery programs in Sudan

The World Food Programme provides 40,000 metric tons of food each month to Darfur's most vulnerable people. In 2008, the organization plans to feed up to 5.6 million people in Sudan on a budget of $697 million. The organization also is charged with ensuring the food's delivery despite damaged roads and bands of marauders and kidnappers.

Additionally, the organization is helping with redevelopment efforts in Darfur and other regions of Sudan, including building schools for internally displaced people, offering a food-for-work program, and paying for emergency road repairs and mine clearance.

The World Food Programme is the United Nations frontline agency in the fight against global hunger. Since it was founded in 1963, the organization has fed more than 1.4 billion of the world's poorest people in about 80 countries, and it has invested more than $30 billion in development and emergency relief.

The talk is sponsored by the President's Office, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, the Office of International Studies, and the Peace Studies Department.