Let me share some of staggering facts:
One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger
For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years.
Poverty is the main cause of hunger. 70 percent of the world’s poor are female. [1]
25% of American children under age six live in poverty. One in eight children under age twelve goes to bed hungry every night. American children have just a 50-50 chance of escaping poverty. [1]
30,500 children die from preventable diseases each day. Malnutrition is linked with over half. [1]
The UN says a $40 billion increase in current aid would provide food, clean water, sanitation, health services, and education to everyone on the planet. [1]
Middle-income nations like Israel and Egypt receive most U.S. aid. Just 40% goes to poor nations. [1]
The U.S. spends over $1 billion a day on defense. 1.2 billion people worldwide live on under $1 a day. [1]
About 850 million people worldwide are undernourished [3].
16,000 children die every day from hunger [4]. That’s about one child every 5 seconds.
In the United States in 2004, 13.5 million households (or 11.9% of all U.S. households) were food insecure; 13.9 million United States children under age 18 lived in food-insecure households (19.0% of all children). [5]
[1] http://www.mainstream-media.net/campaigns/pitch.cfm?id=55
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger
[4] State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
[5] (Source: Nord, M., Andrews, M., Carlson, S. (October 2005) Household Food Security in the United States, 2004. Washington, D.C.: Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.)