World Hunger and Poverty Blog

Guest post by Shawn Dall, author of I AM GOD

I get it – there is poverty in the world. We all see it, and we all feel guilty about it. We have all these resources in the world and some starve and we turn a blind eye because we really don’t know what to do.

Some of us donate money to eliminate our guilt, and don’t think much of where that money goes – often to corporations that pocket much of it and the result is dismal for those that need it. Every charity organization is first and foremost a business, and they capitalize on a portion of the proceeds.

Other times actual food is provided to these areas, and pirates come, take the food by force, and then force the populace to buy it from them by hoarding. The urge to profit always seems to supersede the need for charity.

Other times those who receive the charity become dependent on it, and seem to no longer be able to provide for themselves. The issue of poverty is not something that can simply be addressed – the regional politics usually interfere, because the government in the area does not want to live in poverty, but does not care if the locals do.

This causes dictatorships and taxes in which the poor are kept poor and ignorant while the masters of these regions profit.

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So what is the solution? Education is one. There are entire areas that are being farmed so inefficiently they are turning what could be farmable land into deserts simply by taxing the land due to lack of knowledge.

Animals are needed to pound vegetation and their dung into the ground, which allows for retaining of water in the ground, which allows downpours to be retained in the ground instead of causing floods in dry cracked earth, and allows for new plants to gain a foothold. This process has been done with much success over the past few years – in places where barely any vegetation is left this has allowed for entire ecosystem regions to recover.

Other solutions are to rotate what you plant so when it decomposes it adds vital nutrients to the soil – or change regions to plant the same crops and rotate that way so the other regions can recover. The Celts used to do this with 4 patches of land – reflected n the Celtic cross.

Providing stable infrastructure is another solution. One has to look at the corruption level of the government and determine if any help will actually be long term, or if it will simply collapse when the humanitarian effort pulls out to focus on another area.

It is like the trellis for the vine to grow along – even if this involves political re-alignment or allowing the people to have more of a voice and a say in regional matters. Make sure access to clean water is maintained and erosion of soil is halted by terracing – proper tilling and respect of land is also of utmost importance.

Making sure the people are self-reliant and teach their own people is also of paramount importance. For decades these people HAVE survived, whether that was well or not is up for debate, but they survived – we must respect their cultures and help them in ways that further promote this, while also dealing with superstitions, shamanic practices, gender inequality – changes happen slow, and some don’t happen at all. Education and supportive infrastructure go a long way in helping a people become self reliant – charities should be guides, not crutches.

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A proper king does not seek to rule over ignorant subjects – but seeks to elevate all to the status and wisdom of kings, so that all my help rule alongside them.

Education and empowerment and self reliance are the enemies of dictators and the solutions to poverty – not sending an endless humanitarian attempt to patch a poverty hole, which gets whittled down by the time it gets there – everyone has the potential to survive wherever they are, with some simple knowledge cues – man has survived in the desert – in the arctic and up in the mountains – cooperation and sharing between tribes and sharing of resources is also paramount.

We have to stop thinking that the people we help are helpless to help themselves – they just are unsure of how – give them the knowledge and guide them along it though and they will be eternally grateful. Keep them within their cultures and don’t convince them the only way they won’t be poor is to move away – keep the change in the region and watch as it blossoms into something you never even imagined!

In the end the solution is always spiritual – you must see everyone as interconnected, and all as being able to provide something to help everyone else – knowledge, talents, love. Rich or poor, we are all people, and all worthy of the same level of respect. Respect should be a reflection of earned actions, not a caste system of wealth.

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Books by Shawn Dall

I AM GOD ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by nassim nakad, author of illusion

In a world obsessed by paranoia and conspiracy theories, I find myself wondering about everything happening around me.

From pictures captured on Mars to strange alien mega structure and passing by multiple UFO sights…
The more I read the more I wonder, nothing make sense and what was logical yesterday is proven wrong today.

Facts are very little; we breath, we eat we live and we die.
Even that might be fake and we might be puppets in the hands of a greater power, some call it god others call it mother nature, universe or multiverse.

Theories such as:

The big bang, evolution, holographic universe, parallel universe, clockwork universe and chaos theories…

What is real? even reality is a theory and unproven as well.

This how I got myself into conflicts, then I tried to separate between the reality and the illusions of a small event.

Small is a description it was a huge event for me but that’s so relative, similar to human’s view of their tiny civilization and size in the universe.

My essay to decode the conspiracies goes on, and my struggle to know how real I am will keep me busy for a while… till everything thing ends.

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Books by nassim nakad

illusion ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by Anna Lindsay, author of Eden Undone

I just found an email in my inbox, inviting me to submit a guest blog article. "How wonderful!" thought I, envisaging a timely opportunity to tell everyone about my novel’s forthcoming American release.

But… hunger and poverty.

Oh.

What would you like me to say about it? It’s bad. Yep, check.

End of story? I’m guessing not.

Oh-so-easy flippancy points out that poverty and hunger are relative. And yes, that’s true, isn’t it? Check. Remember the classic tragicomic reaction by the out-of-touch French Queen Marie-Antoinette, when she heard that the poor of Paris had no money even to buy bread. "Well, let them eat cake then" …No bread? Oh well. Run out to the shops then, there’s a dear. What’s the problem?.. Or as the poet Steve Turner wrote in his poem "Poor":

I thought I was poor.
I mean,
nowhere left
to stack the videos.
Then I realised,
there are people
in the world
who don’t even have shelves.

So yes, poverty and hunger are relative. How often do we say "Gosh, I’m starving!" when actually we mean that it’s been a whole hour, or two, or three, since our last snack? How often do we say we’re poor when we in our comfortable Western world nevertheless have a roof over our heads, shoes on our feet, food in a cupboard, or money for cigarettes?

But I don’t think that that’s the sort of level of hunger and poverty we’re talking about, is it? We’ve all seen the images. Now close your eyes and IMAGINE. Imagine. What does it actually feel like? What sounds and smells reach your ears? What do your bare bruised feet feel like, there on the rocky, dusty ground, your makeshift cardboard soles long since reduced to pasty crumbles? What does it feel like, when hunger has devoured your muscles and made bony joints so weak that even standing up feels like the most draining, impossible task? When you watch with impotent eyes your child starving, starving, starving yet somehow still trusting you, the precious parent, to do that which you can no longer do – protect…

Let’s start with the easy, shall we? Thirty years ago, I was told that humankind has 10 tonnes of conventional explosive for every man, woman, and child on earth, stashed away in the respective governments’ and organisations’ lockers. I don’t imagine that that proportion has lessened really – and that’s without counting nuclear and bio weapons etc… Merely conventional explosive. Well, pardon me, but frankly, I suspect that I could be convincingly reduced to smithereens with rather less than ten tonnes. Don’t you? So now that I’ve been thoroughly obliterated by "my" portion of "my" ten tonnes of conventional explosive (and not counting all that expensive bio-terror and nuclear stuff), what could we do with all that money that’s been saved by not requiring the remainder of those ten tonnes? And the ten tonnes reserved for my neighbour, whose smithereens have presumably been added to mine for efficiency?

Logic says… quite a bit. Reality says… another monthly bonus for someone’s bank account.

Well, what about the natural resources which the world has? Surely they’re enough? Enough to feed, water, and educate every woman, man, and child on the planet?

Yes, they are. So what’s the problem?

If you’re Christian like me, then you know that the Bible says that before the Fall, we lived in … perfection. Perfect love. Perfect Relationship. Perfect everything. With sin – that separation from Life Himself – came not just death, but selfishness and greed. What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine… Look at our corrupt politicians and bankers and fatcats who line their pockets and those of their cronies with more and more, at the expense of the hoi polloi… Those who decry war with empty words, while rubbing their hands at the dollar signs it brings…

So what do we do? Another oh-so-easy answer is to pour our guilt-offerings into another begging bowl, pay off our nagging unease, ignore those fundamental causes which affect those in afflicted areas as much as they affect those in ours.

Will that help? Maybe. Hopefully.

But the problem with easy answers is that they’re generally only superficial. The root issues – that greed, that selfishness, that jealousy of whoever has more than we, that corruption, that sin – those remain. And while they do, our elastoplasts of platitudes and token gestures and liberal PC-itis may boost our egos or street credentials, but do little to alter the dynamics which led to those torn and blistered feet, those weakened frames, those dying eyes.

Change… surely starts with taking responsibility? For ourselves, for the next time we complain, the next time we feel jealous or ungrateful or greedy. For our politicians and bankers and fatcats, whose spin we swallow and whose policies we allow through inertia and apathy. And in those affected countries where hunger stalks, and poverty destroys, and money and resources which would help goes instead into the latest armaments and Gucci pockets of the few. Imagine – a worldwide uprising of responsibility, of integrity, of repentance, and compassion, and love which is strong enough to dare to rock the boat – to recognise evil, and fight it.

We are ALL responsible. Can we change anything? Perhaps, if sufficient of us, everywhere, choose to stand up and say "Enough!" loudly enough, not just here but in those countries where evil swaggers…

And in the meantime… please hand me that oh-so-easy answer and that metaphorical sticking-plaster. For while I cannot change the world by myself, I can be responsible for myself. And metaphorical elastoplasts might be superficial tokens. But… they’re better than nothing at all.

#InItTogether

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Books by Anna Lindsay

Eden Undone ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by Claire Youmans, author of The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy Book 2 Chasing Dreams

We, as Americans and others in privileged societies, waste terrible quantities of food each day. We buy too much. We toss leftovers. We clean refrigerators of all the produce we bought and didn’t eat. We grow science projects in those little containers in the back. We make it illegal for restaurants to donate unserved leftovers, for stores to donate expired foods and slightly off produce, and often there is no way for them to do so even if it’s legal. What do we get? We get fat. We get sick. We get broke. Our neighbors go hungry.

We don’t have to do any of this. We can make meal plans before we shop. We can make lists and stick to them. We can eat what we buy. We can bring home the leftovers from our own restaurant meals and eat them. These causes produce an effect: we eat less, we spend less, and we do not waste what other people would give their eye teeth to be able to eat, often right in our own neighborhoods.

We save money. We can use some of that money to help finance food banks, meal programs, restaurant donations, help feed others in our own neighborhoods, and still have some extra. We eat better, others eat better, we have a little extra cash, and our neighborhoods improve.

If we just stopped wasting edible food, fewer people would go hungry. It’s a modest proposal, but well within our grasp. It would make a difference.

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Books by Claire Youmans

The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy Book 2 Chasing Dreams ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by Dennis Kaminsky, author of Read and Teach About the ABC’s

When we think of world hunger and poverty, we can see pictures in our minds of those frail bodies, large innocent eyes filled with hurt and tears, bulging stomachs, thin arms and legs, and general loss of hope.

But hunger and poverty affects more than the physical body, it also affects the child’s mind. One can only imagine what goes through the minds of these poor children. Most have probably not even seen a book, never mind the opportunity to learn to read.

Let’s help those poor starving children build hope for their future by ending world hunger and poverty today!

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Books by Dennis Kaminsky

Read and Teach About the ABC’s ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Read and Teach About the Zoo ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by Rebecca Monhollon, author of Mischief on the Mountain

World hunger and poverty, these words evoke powerful images to the mind. We imagine starving children in other countries. Little boys and girls with big eyes and their bones sticking out. We see them cry and insects buzzing around them. We feel sorry for them and our heart aches for a moment. The moment passes quickly and we go on with our lives.

The truth is, the face of hunger and poverty is right next door to us. Our neighbors who have lost their job or have experienced a medical disaster and every penny they have now goes to hospital care. These people put on a smile and go about their every day life, too proud to let us know the disaster that has befallen them. They are grateful for the school lunch program, at least they know that their children eat once a day. They cry at night and get up to face dire circumstances in the morning but they go on.

And then there are the homeless people, many of them our own veterans. How can that happen we ask ourselves. We see them begging on the corner and we hope the light changes so we don’t have to sit waiting to get on with our busy schedule while we are forced to notice them.

When we actually stop and think about it, we feel overwhelmed. We say to ourselves that we are only one person and what can we do? I am the same way. Every year during the holidays I say to myself that I should help in some way. But I tell myself the situation is too big for me to make any difference and happily go on with my life. I hope to change that this year because I think if we all do something, even if its small like buying a meal and donating that to a shelter, just think what collectively we could do.

These truths force us to be grateful for the things we have been given. Especially this time of year. The holidays are fast approaching and we are busy planning dinners and get together parties with family and friends.

Stopping hunger here in America starts with me. If I do one thing to help then maybe we can see a change for the better. I wish everyone a blessed Thanksgiving and a very Merry Christmas.

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Books by Rebecca Monhollon

Mischief on the Mountain ~ View on Bookshelves | Amazon link unavailable.