Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Give a little hope today



According to Heifer:
• Right now, more than 500 million people are living in "absolute poverty" and more than 15 million children die of hunger every year.

• World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the population is underfed and another third is starving.

• Even in the United States, 46 percent of African-American children and 49 percent of Latino children are considered chronically hungry.
Hunger is something I've never experienced, thankfully, and that makes it hard to sit here and say this is what we should do...I definitely don't have the answers, but it seems doing nothing is not a good solution either.

I realize that the solutions to this problem are extremely complicated. There is an over abundance of food in this world, yet millions (maybe even billions) of people are still starving. The world has changed so much over the past century, even the past 20 years, so that now it's nearly impossible to subsistence farm. People the world over have lost their land to development and large commercial farms. They have been forced to move to cities and slums to find work because they can no longer make a living growing food.

O.K., so this is supposed to be a post about hope, right? So, what can you do today?

• Post about world hunger on April 29.

• Visit Heifer International to learn more about Pass On The Gift.

• Make a small donation or take some other action to end world hunger.

Join this event and add a badge to your blog before April 29.

• I recently watched the Future of Food again online, and while it makes the problem seem overwhelming, it's a good eye-opener. You can watch the entire video at Hulu by clicking on the link above.

• Support community and small scale agriculture. This, I think, is one of the most important solutions. First of all, this has the direct potential to help feed people in communities that cannot always afford to buy their own food. When people learn to grow food themselves, they are learning a life skill that can help to move them away from hunger and create a community of support. Second, even if you don't grow the food yourself, by supporting a local CSA or family farm, you are giving your money back to the community, and back to families, rather than large scale agriculture and bio-tech companies that do not always have human health at the top of their list. For more information, check out Laurel's post here. It's really a worthy read. Also, you also might want to read about Farmer Frank - it's a happy story :)

3 comments:

  1. Great post.

    Thanks for getting involved in Hunger and Hope!

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  2. Thanks Peter! Glad to be involved...

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  3. Oh, I missed this! But Heifer is an organization I love. One I plan to get really involved in when the children all leave home and I have more time to give. Great post!

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