Sunday, November 25, 2007

a few tiny steps to help alleviate world hunger




What else can I do to help end hunger?

Here are two key things you can do to help end hunger. Both are free and easy to do.

  1. Add your name to the One Campaign, where several million people have already joined together “as One” to end hunger and extreme poverty. If enough people join, dreams for a better world can be made into reality very quickly.
  2. The United Nations estimates that the cost to end world hunger completely, along with diseases related to hunger and poverty, is about $195 billion a year. Twenty-two countries have joined together to raise this money by each contributing 0.7% (less than 1%) of national income. Some of the countries have already met this goal. Others are being a little slow, but this can be fixed. You can see how the countries are doing here. You can print a letter to support your country’s participation here.

Hunger and World Poverty

About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.

Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.

There are effective programs to break this spiral. For adults, there are “food for work” programs where the adults are paid with food to build schools, dig wells, make roads, and so on. This both nourishes them and builds infrastructure to end the poverty. For children, there are “food for education” programs where the children are provided with food when they attend school. Their education will help them to escape from hunger and global poverty.

Hunger and World Poverty Sources: United Nations World Food Program (WFP), Oxfam, UNICEF.

http://www.poverty.com/

These first few sites offer information following up on what is presented here on Poverty.com.

Next are listed many major international organizations that have related information about poverty, hunger, and preventable diseases. Together, these organizations comprise hundreds of thousands of men and women all over the earth. Many of these individuals work long hours in the fight against poverty, often in sparse or dangerous conditions.


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