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UN food agency advances into its fifth decade with the toss of a coin

UN food agency advances into its fifth decade with the toss of a coin

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Support for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) became legal tender in Europe today when the Italian Government dedicated its first commemorative euro coin to the agency as it begins its fifth decade of delivering food aid to the world's hungry.

“Everyone has a coin in their hand at some point of the day – what better way to remind Europeans of the 800 million hungry people who often don't know where their next meal is coming from,” WFP Executive Director James T. Morris said.

The front of the new 2 euro coin, legal currency across the 12-country Eurozone, is engraved with a globe and the words “World Food Programme" as well as displaying three key components of food aid – maize, rice and wheat.

Until this year, euro coins carried a European front with a national symbol on the back, but since January Eurozone countries can dedicate the national face of the coin to a specific event or cause. Sixteen million of the minted commemorative coins will be circulated.

A special version of the new coin is available upon request from WFP in return for a minimum donation of 10 euros – enough to guarantee a nutritious school lunch for more than 60 hungry children in the world's poorest countries.

WFP, headquartered in Rome, began delivering emergency food aid to victims of an earthquake in Iran in 1962. Since then, it has become the world's largest humanitarian organization, providing food to 1.2 billion of the poorest people across the globe. In 2003 alone, its food aid reached the hands and mouths of over 100 million people in 81 countries, from Iraq to Ethiopia.