Get qualified help
ActSmall · Food is informational. For acute hunger, dietary, medical, or emergency-food concerns, ask qualified people in your community — not this site.
Not nutritional, medical, or famine-response advice. Use the contacts and references below.
If you or someone in your household needs food right now
If anyone in your household is in immediate need of food — contact your local food bank or emergency-food line first.
- Anywhere — ask your local council, religious organisation, or community centre. They almost always know who runs the nearest pantry. The Global FoodBanking Network has a country-by-country locator covering ~50 countries.
- European Union — European Food Banks Federation (locator by country).
- United Kingdom — Trussell Trust food-bank finder or call 0808 208 2138; IFAN for independent food banks.
- Canada — Food Banks Canada.
- Australia — Foodbank Australia.
- New Zealand — KiwiHarvest and Salvation Army food banks.
- India — Akshaya Patra meal programme, National Food Security Act ration shops (PDS).
- South Africa — FoodForward SA.
- Brazil — Ministry of Development and Social Assistance (CRAS/CREAS locators).
- United States — Feeding America food-bank locator or call 211 for a referral.
For nutritional or medical concerns
- Your primary-care clinician, particularly if anyone in the household is pregnant, has a chronic illness, or shows signs of malnutrition.
- For infants and children: a paediatrician or community health worker. The WHO nutrition pages publish the international clinical references but are not a substitute for in-person assessment.
- Targeted maternal and infant nutrition programmes — the EU’s school-fruit/milk schemes, India’s ICDS / Anganwadi, the UK’s Healthy Start, Brazil’s Bolsa Família / Auxílio Brasil, US WIC — have local-language entry points; ask a community health worker or social worker.
For acute famine or humanitarian emergencies
- Defer to your country’s national disaster-response authority and to operators with audited accounts and decades of field experience — the WFP, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, ICRC.
- Major humanitarian appeals are coordinated through the UN OCHA Global Humanitarian Overview.
- Do not send unsolicited shipments of food or clothing into a crisis zone — they create logistics burdens for responders. Donate cash to vetted operators instead.
External organisations linked elsewhere on this site are independent third parties; ActSmall does not control their content. Always defer to qualified local help.