Today, We Launch Operation End Starvation!
Today, we launch something that many of us have spent our careers hoping to see: Operation End Starvation (OES).
For decades, we have known how to save children suffering from severe malnutrition. We have had the solutions. We have had the evidence. What we have lacked is the mechanism to deliver those solutions with the scale, speed, transparency, and multi-year planning required to end child deaths from hunger.
Today, that changes.
OES is a new public-private partnership built around a simple but ambitious goal: to end child deaths from acute malnutrition.
Every year, roughly one million children die from acute malnutrition—the deadliest form of malnutrition. That's a child every 30 seconds. Yet we already have proven, low-cost solutions that can prevent most of these deaths.
Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) can bring a severely malnourished child back from the brink of death for about the cost of a family dinner at a restaurant. Multiple Micronutrient Supplements (MMS) can dramatically improve birth outcomes and help mothers and babies survive and thrive for just a few dollars per pregnancy.
The tragedy is not that we don't know what works. The tragedy is that we have never built a system capable of delivering these solutions to every child who needs them.
Operation End Starvation was created to change that.
Key Details:
The Funding: OES launches with $33M in private commitments toward a $4B six-year goal. By operating as a lean platform where private philanthropy covers 100% of our overhead costs, every single public dollar goes directly to purchasing and delivering treatment. We are bringing the transparency, speed, and accountability that donors, taxpayers, and vulnerable children deserve.
Who is Involved: Founded by donors including the Eleanor Crook Foundation, CRI Foundation, and philanthropists Annie and Jacob Ma-Weaver, with an independent board chaired by former Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT).
Bipartisan and Coalition Support: This initiative is championed by a broad, enthusiastic bipartisan coalition in Washington, including Senators Welch, Merkley, and Warnock, and Representatives McGovern, Scott, DeLauro, and others, as well as many leading NGOs and domestic agricultural organizations.
OES is founded on core principles of cost-effectiveness, transparency, and independence. Most importantly, it is built on a belief that should no longer be considered radical: children should not die from starvation in a world that already possesses the tools to save them.
I want to thank the countless partners, advocates, donors, policymakers, researchers, manufacturers, and implementers who helped make this moment possible. This launch belongs to all of you.
But today is not a finish line. It is a starting line.
If we succeed, future generations will look back on child deaths from malnutrition the way we look back on diseases and tragedies that humanity once accepted as inevitable—but no longer does. Moments like this don't happen by accident, and we need your help to amplify this launch. Please visit our website at Operation End Starvation and share our announcement on LinkedIn and X, with your networks.
The path forward is brighter than it has ever been. Thank you again for continuing to share our steadfast belief that a world where children no longer die from starvation is years, not decades, away.
With gratitude, and more to come,
Will Moore
CEO, Operation End Starvation (OES)
