Hungry Children & World Hunger Facts

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.)

Calls For Renewed Effort To Fight Hunger

UN food agency calls for renewed effort to fight hunger:

If the world hopes to achieve a set of internationally agreed development targets by 2015, it must begin by tackling hunger and extreme poverty, especially in sub-Saharan Africa the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told the committee, “We stand very little chance of achieving the rest of the goals – environment, education, child mortality, maternal health, gender equality, HIV/AIDS – unless the first MDG is achieved.”

The goal of halving the number of people suffering from poverty and hunger by 2015 appears to be within reach at the global level, said Prabhu Pingali, Director of FAO’s Agricultural and Development Economics Division.

He noted, however, that sub-Saharan Africa lags so far behind the rest of the world that close to half the world’s poor could be living there by 2015.

Read the UN News Centre article.

WHO: Drinking-Water and Sanitation

A recent report from the World Health Organization about drinking-water and sanitation says:

Safe drinking water, sanitation and good hygiene are fundamental to health, survival, growth and development. However, these basic necessities are still a luxury for many of the world’s poor people.

Over 1.1 billion of our fellow citizens do not use drinking water from improved sources, while 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.

Safe drinking water and basic sanitation are so obviously essential to health that they risk being taken for granted.

Every year, unsafe water, coupled with a lack of basic sanitation, kills at least 1.6 million children under the age of five years — more than eight times the number of people who died in the Asian tsunami of 2004.

2.6 billion people, more than 40% of the world population, do not use a toilet, but defecate in the open or in unsanitary places.

Fighting Poverty $1 At A Time

Microfinance loans demonstrate a great way to fight poverty and hunger without government interference or state socialist ideas.

The limited amounts of these effective loans proves that the problem lay in the lack of opportunity available to the poor and hungry. Additionally, the fact that these are loans and not monetary gifts, but rather loans that must be repaid, shows that fighting poverty and hunger doesn’t involve impossible costs.

Take, for example, the story of Noni Bala Ghosh, who revived her business and escaped poverty with a $50 loan.

Excerpt:

It all started with $50. In 1988, that’s what it took Noni Bala Ghosh to revive her family’s business of making sweets to sell in Kholshi, her tiny village in Bangladesh.

Family members had given up the business because they could no longer afford to buy milk to churn into rich, thick chhana, a milk-derivative that is used in making candy and many sweets.

Driven to despair, Noni heeded the advice of several women in her village who had taken loans from Grameen Bank, a non-profit lending organization that developed the poverty-busting lending program known as “micro-credit,” in the 1970s.

Through a series of small loans from the bank, she soon bought a cow and began to supply her own milk, and eventually engaged her two sons and husband, Gopal, to help support the family business she led. After 3 1/2 years, Noni had become the key supplier to a prominent sweets shop in Dhaka. Once again, she could afford to feed and clothe her family.

Though $50 seems like a relatively small amount to most, it can be the key to breaking out of poverty once and for all for the more than 1 billion people in the world who are living on less than a dollar a day.

Since its beginning, the micro-finance model of providing small loans to help expand or start a self-sustaining enterprise has helped more than 8.2 million of the world’s poorest people — in at least 115 countries — to stand on their feet. (Watch women in Mexico fight poverty — 2:49)

“I never thought it would reach so far,” said Dr. Mohammed Yunus, the founder of the micro-finance system. He first learned of its ability to change a poor person’s outlook on life when in 1976 he decided to lend a total of $27 to pay off the loan-shark debts of 42 villagers in rural Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Charlotte Crop Walk

Charlotte, North Carolina has been home to the nation’s largest Crop Walk for more than 20 years. This year’s walk will be Oct. 15.

The Charlotte Crop Walk raises money to help Loaves & Fishes, Crisis Assistance Ministry and the Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina fight hunger in our area while supporting Church World Services in the global war against poverty. The 2005 Charlotte Crop Walk raised more than $261,000.

New this year is an interactive Web site. Sign up to walk, sponsor a walker or make a donation by visiting www.cropwalk.com or calling 704-333-2955.

Registration the day of the walk begins at 1 p.m. The walk starts at 2:30 p.m. This event begins and ends at Memorial Stadium at Kings Drive and Seventh Street.