Progress on attaining the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to tackle poverty, hunger and other social ills by 2015, remains slow but countries are realizing the importance of the life-and-death targets and increasingly know what needs to be done to attain them, the UN adviser on the project said today, sounding a […]
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Hunger & Poverty in Vermont
The story of hunger in Vermont is told through vignettes: The father who forgoes food so his children have more to eat; the mother who cuts the milk with water to make it last longer; the child who is eligible for school food programs, but goes hungry rather than stand out as “poor” among the […]
Taking Africa Out of the Hunger Pit
The role of agriculture in addressing the [Africa’s] economic development is a foregone conclusion. Business as usual will not improve food productivity on the continent. Africa needs to change its ways in order to be able to feed its people and ensure its main source of economic development – agriculture – grows and develops. Prosperity […]
Address Underlying Causes Of Poverty
…the underlying question is: Why are we providing help for the needy only by treating the symptoms of poverty and hunger? What happens when the holidays pass and the poor are back where they were last year and the year before? Being charitable and caring at any time of the year is wonderful. But if […]
Poverty Is A Threat To Peace
[Muhammad Yunus is the head of Grameen Bank, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for it’s innovative work on microcredit lending with the poor of Bangladesh. This is an excerpt of his acceptance speech, given on December 10 to the Nobel Foundation in Oslo. The full text can be read here.] Ladies and […]
Hunger Rose In U.S. In 2005
…according to the USDA report, more than 35 million people were living in households that are “food insecure.” That means 12 percent of the U.S. population didn’t get enough to eat for at least part of last year. According to the report, things got even worse for those who are worst off. The number of […]