Dawn from Wales, in Britain, and Asemu from northern Ethiopia have more in common than you might think. Both are 22, and both have a child under the age of two. What you may be surprised to learn is that they face a similar financial struggle to feed their children a healthy diet. And even though one lives in a rich country, and the other in a poor country, the answer to their problems may lie in the same solution: benefits paid to them in cash.

A half-hour documentary called Running on Empty - co-produced by Save the Children UK and Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) - shows how cash benefits are vital in helping Asemu and Dawn feed their families, although they're not always enough.

You can watch a trailer here. Running on Empty is due to be broadcast on BBC World as part of the Life series in the autumn.

In the blog below, Save the Children UK chief executive Jasmine Whitbread explains why social protection programmes are often the best way to prevent hunger.

Buying enough food to feed the family for a week is a task that frequently crosses every mother's mind. But imagine facing a weekly shopping bill that was three times what you could hope to earn.

That is the reality for some mothers in Bangladesh, one of four countries Save the Children visited for its latest report, Running on Empty, along with Ethiopia, Tanzania and Myanmar. In our research we set out to measure the gap between the cost of a feeding an average family a healthy diet for a week and what people earned in that time. What we found was that many families are simply too poor to ever buy enough nutritious food for their children so that they grow up healthy and strong.

Every year, half of all children who don't make it to the age of five still die from hunger. That is 5.6 million children each year. Millions more face a future blighted by the scars of malnutrition, growing up stunted, small for their age and under-developed both mentally and physically.

Many of the families in the countries we researched live on a dollar a day, the internationally recognised measure of poverty. But to feed their children an adequate diet, and stop them becoming stunted, would cost around $1.15 a day in Myanmar and $1.27 a day in Ethiopia. It is poverty that lies behind this chronic emergency.

The most effective way for us to combat the hunger these children face day in, day out is not necessarily to give them handouts of food. Save the Children believes that putting cash, rather than food, into the hands of their parents is the best way to make sure a child is well fed.

People want cash because it gives them freedom to choose. It allows families to make their own decisions about what to buy now and what to save for the future. No one knows what a child needs better than a mother and providing her with enough cash to look after her family empowers her to do just that.

SENSIBLE SPENDING

Putting cash directly into people's hands may seem an unusual way of tackling hunger in developing countries, but it is an efficient, effective way of helping those who need it the most. A similar system has been operating in Britain for years - here we call it child support benefit, social security or a pension.

This way of providing assistance to the poorest families really works. I've seen it in action and heard stories from mothers in Ethiopia, Tanzania and all over the world who say that, without the regular cash payments they've received, their family would not have survived the lean season - when crops aren't harvested - intact.

All the evidence shows that not only do poor people spend their money sensibly but that the first, and often most substantial, investment they make is to buy more and better quality food for their children. This system has a direct impact on the health of their families.

Governments in the poorest countries cannot afford to provide basic social protection, including free access to health and education for the large number of poor families in their country. They need additional support through development aid from richer nations.

Save the Children believes that rich country donors should support lower income countries to introduce cash payments for the poorest people. We're not even asking for more money - introducing these types of programmes doesn't need any extra funds, just that the money already pledged is channelled to the most vulnerable families in a more effective way.

We simply ask for donors to deliver on their pledges, particularly their promise to channel 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI) to international aid.

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