World Hunger and Poverty

The following video shows Tupac Shakur performing his song Brenda’s Got A Baby, which tells the story of a 12-year-old girl from the ghetto who has a baby that she cannot support. The song addresses teen pregnancy and the lack of support for impoverished teens from their families, the government, and society. Watch it:

I wish […]

Many anti-poverty and anti-hunger efforts consist of simple, short-term acts of charity, such as soup kitchens or free-food picnics. Food Not Bombs, for example, often schedules public rallies where the volunteers provide food that everyone including the homeless and poor can come and eat for free.
Feeding a person a meal will fend off their hunger […]

A major problem people who struggle financially face is that cheap foods tend to be unhealthier than more expensive foods. It is easier to find unhealthy foods on a tight budget than it is to find healthier foods. Additionally, poor people may have trouble finding enough food of any kind.
It is important for anyone who […]

An article today from The Canadian Press reports that tougher welfare rules in Canada have proved effective at reducing poverty.
Generally, I oppose government-funded and government-managed welfare. Though, I do not want to abruptly abolish it, because many people and families depend on it. Of course, welfare helps cause this dependency. When we give people things […]

Sarah Simpson wrote today about rallies in Kenyan for the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. I include an excerpt:
Thousands of mostly school age kids from the Nairobi slum of Korogocho gathered in a covered churchyard tucked amongst shambling tin houses for a morning of music and songs. It was their contribution to […]

L. Muthoni Wanyeki, the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights, recently wrote about an international call for action against poverty taking place tomorrow:
This Wednesday, October 17, marks the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This year, once again, the Global Coalition Against Poverty is trying to make it into the Guinness Book of […]

I completely believe we can end poverty by investing in education. We do not need any more charity, and charity alone will not end poverty.
Universally providing high-quality education to all children would end poverty. I believe we can best do this with student loans. Of course, the funding for education must include the students’ cost […]

I love an article by Alyssa Katharine Ritz Battistoni about American poverty. In it she makes a lot of great points poverty in the United States. One point that especially stuck out follows:
It’s much easier to dismiss poor people as undeserving, unsavory, crackheads, welfare queens–not like respectable middle-class Americans–than to acknowledge the enormous problems that […]

I have been doing community service at Foodshare on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have been working at a produce warehouse. The workers and I sort fruits and vegetables, mostly bagging them up while throwing out the bad ones.
Foodshare is a great organization, in my opinion. I knew before doing the community service that they are […]

Students from the Sociology Club at IUP dressed in ragged clothes and handed out informational flyers about poverty. The flyers included statistics from UNICEF research, such as the fact that 30,000 children die every day from hunger (more than the UN’s 18,000 estimate) and that half the world lives on less than $2 a day.
I […]