…about world hunger, poverty and the common human struggle… because we're #InItTogether
I watched two great, but sad, hunger-related videos on YouTube today. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That must be true, because these videos are worth a million. They both use a nice mix of slideshow photography and music to move the audience.
This first video, entitled “Children”, displays pictures of children all over the world with the music This Time Around:
This second video, entitled “Starvation – The Truth”, takes a look at starvation and hunger in Africa:
A friend of mine recently directed me to the website for Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge To Persons Of Faith, and recommended the book to me. In the book, George McGovern, Bob Dole, and Donald E. Messer share their conviction that ending hunger is a religious imperative and a human priority. Writing for congregations and individuals of faith, they appeal to the biblical, theological and ethical foundations of action against hunger. Informative, inspiring, and filled with practical suggestions and discussion questions, the book encourages personal involvement and political commitment to the cause.
Here’s an excerpt from the foreword by Bill Clinton:
“This book makes an important argument about hunger that all concerned citizens should heed: hunger is not just a problem for politicians. We all have an ethical and moral obligation to help people who are suffering. Ending Hunger Now is an appeal to people of faith to meet this moral challenge with concrete action.”
As I’ve said before, I’m not a religious person myself, but I recognize the help provided by religious organizations in the fight on hunger. This book and the website on which it’s located, are perfect examples of this.
You can buy Ending Hunger now on Amazon.
-Scott Hughes
by Scott Hughes
Hunger’s a beast of a problem. 15 million children die from it every year. Even in the United States, 14 million children are food insecure. The facts keep going like that. Off the top of my head, I could probably spit out enough facts about hunger to make you cry. I’ve got pictures too. In fact, I have an entire website dedicated to ending hunger and poverty, namely childhood hunger and poverty. 10 minutes on that website and it becomes clearly obvious to anyone that as a society we must fix this problem.
Since I run a website dedicated to fighting hunger to the end, it seems appropriate for me to explain the methods that we as a society need to take to end hunger.
In and of itself, food is far from the end-all solution. It’s not even the last step. Of course, it is a step. In fact, it’s the first step. Food is the first step. That’s because, if a hungry child fails to eat today, that hungry child dies tonight. However, if the hungry child eats today, then we still have a hungry child tomorrow. We cannot end hunger without food, but food alone won’t solve the problem. Simply giving food to the hungry to solve hunger is like shoveling water out of a sinking ship. For example, in 2005 the World Food Programme (WFP) distributed 4.2 million metric tons of food to the world’s hungry [1], yet in 2005 852 million people across the world went hungry. [2]
In addition to food, we must utilize education. Education is the silver bullet required to rid the world of the vampire that is hunger, sucking the blood of justice from our society. In this context, it isn’t even a metaphor to use the clich�d Lao Tzu proverb: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” The future of a child is literally determined by the availability of education, and the quality of that education.
What an unjust world, in which simply the birth location of a child can sentence the child to a life of poverty and starvation!
It isn’t a far-fetched dream to imagine a world in which all children, and even all people, have access to education. For example, less than one percent of what the world spent every year on weapons could put every child into school, yet it doesn’t happen [3]. Unlike weapons which blow up, education can be funded by student loans, meaning it doesn’t even require spending or charity, just investment.
Education doesn’t just help fight hunger for the one educated person. Rather, the viral benefits of education spread outward and back like Karma itself. For example, an educated man from a poor neighborhood may open a business and employ other people from his neighborhood, who would otherwise be unemployed or under-employed. Perhaps, those employees then could use some of their pay to invest in their own education…
Although education is the most powerful tool in the fight against hunger and poverty, just like food alone won’t solve the problem, neither will education. There is still more needed to fix the problem once and for all. This last step is of course the hardest step. The society and the social system in which people, namely children, starved must change. This change can’t be quick and won’t be easy. Rather, it must be a change caused by the education itself. Just like food is required to allow education, education is required to allow this social change. Just as educating a starved corpse is useless, enticing social change with an undereducated populace is useless. In contrast, as we educate ourselves and our communities and the entire world, then as an educated society we can finally hack at the root of the dysfunctional social system that now allows hunger and poverty. It isn’t until we can hack at that root that hunger and poverty can finally be eliminated.
And thus the solution: The hungry children must be fed, so they can then be educated, so that finally these educated people can secure – not just for their lifetime but for all lifetimes to come – social freedom, justice, and peace… a world in which no child goes hungry.
About The Author: Scott Hughes owns and operates Millions Of Mouths – a website dedicated to ending hunger. You can discuss hunger on the hunger and poverty forums. Read more articles like this at the hunger and poverty blog on MillionsOfMouths.com:
http://millionsofmouths.com/blog/nfblog/
[1] Wikipedia Aug 23, 2006
[2] Human Development Report 2005, United Nations Development Programme. http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/
by Jennifer Shukla
Several years ago, I was living in New York City for a summer as part of a college internship. I had a roommate there, but we kept very different schedules so I almost never saw her. Every morning on my way to work, I would pass a homeless woman who slept under an overhang on the side of my building. The first few days I saw her, although I’m certainly not proud of it, I experienced a feeling common to those people with jobs and homes living in the city who encounter homeless individuals on a regular basis. I looked at the woman sitting there in rags and saw nothing more than another smelly dirty homeless person and resented that I had to go to work while she just sat there all day asking for other people’s money. Despite my awful attitude, the homeless woman pleasantly smiled and waved at me every day when I left in the morning and greeted me every time I came home at night. Her constant friendliness broke through my barriers and I started to return her smiles and waves as I passed by.
After a few days of our new arrangement of exchanging pleasantries, I began to wonder, who was this woman? It bothered me that I saw her everyday, said good morning or waved, and yet knew nothing about the woman other than that she lived outside my building. So, I started pausing to talk to her instead of just passing by some days. I learned that her name was Anna, that she was very religious, and that Anna had been a cleaning person. On the days when I stopped to talk to Anna, I would usually give her some spare change or a dollar. I did it partially because I felt bad for Anna, but honestly I was probably more motivated by a feeling of social obligation than genuine charity. Although I passed Anna at least twice every day, other than my brief encounters with her, I gave her little thought throughout the day.
After a few weeks, though, I was cooking dinner for myself in my apartment one evening. I found myself wondering what Anna was eating that night, whether she had gotten enough spare change to buy herself food that day. I looked at the box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in my hand (I was a college student, it’s what I lived on those days) and realized that it would be no extra work to make a little more macaroni than I could eat. I wanted to share the extras with Anna, but was afraid that she would be insulted that I thought she couldn’t get food for herself or that it was somehow a bad thing to do. I nervously scooped out some macaroni on a paper plate and brought it to Anna. I don’t know why I was afraid, I guess I thought maybe she would throw it at me or yell at me. I clumsily offered her the food and she gratefully accepted. Then I wandered back upstairs to my apartment. I knew it was just a tiny little gesture, after all it had been no extra work to make a little more food and had cost me next to nothing, but somehow that simple act made me feel a lot better about myself and about the world.
After that, it felt a lot more natural. Sometimes I went out with friends or my boyfriend or ate at work, but whenever I cooked at home, I would make a little extra and bring Anna a plate of spaghetti, rice, grilled chicken, or whatever I made with my limited cooking abilities. Some evenings, I just brought Anna the food and left. Once in a while, I would bring my food outside too and sit and eat with Anna. On those evenings, Anna would talk and I would listen. She wasn’t as clever or as witty as others that I’ve known, but she was honest, forthcoming, and friendly. Anna told me about life on the streets and the life she had before she lost her job and home. Sometimes Anna mumbled or repeated the same stories over and over, but she never once judged me or expected more of me than I was willing to give. She was always very grateful when I brought her food and never complained about the nights when I didn’t bring her food.
Eventually, the summer ended and I had to head back to college. I would love to say that I kept in touch with Anna but that would be a lie. I said goodbye, handed Anna some cash, and moved away. But I never forgot those dinners with Anna. To this day, when I encounter a homeless person, I don’t just see a pile of dirty rags, but an individual with a unique story. It makes me smile when I think that my little gesture of kindness did so much. It cost me almost nothing, took very little effort, and yet helped feed a woman who might not have been able to eat otherwise and brought me in contact with one of my all-time favorite dinner companions.
Please post your comments on the above story in this thread at the world hunger and poverty forums!
The National Coalition for the Homeless, founded in 1984, is a national network of people who are currently experiencing or who have experienced homelessness, activists and advocates, community-based and faith-based service providers, and others committed to a single mission. That mission, our common bond, is to end homelessness.
I recently received a news story from my friend, D.J Pine, about a push by minority communities for more complete and inclusive American History.
Here’s a short excerpt:
American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling Jamestown, Va., in 1607. They hear about how white Northerners freed the black slaves, how Asians came in the mid-1800s to build Western railroads.
The lessons have left out a lot.
Forty-two years before Jamestown, Spaniards and American Indians lived in St. Augustine, Fla. At least several thousand Latinos and nearly 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War. And Asian-Americans had been living in California and Louisiana since the 1700s.
The Eurocentrism taught in mainstream U.S. history classes is very relevant to hunger and poverty in the United States – a country in which 14 million children are food insecure. The Eurocentric and patriotic way that United States history is taught convinces Americans that the minorities, the working-class, and the poor are inferior. This is the main cause of the myth of meritocracy in the United States. Because oppression is omitted from the history courses, and because the achievements of the minorities and the poor are downplayed and ignored, the American people – both poor and rich – falsely believe that the poor are just lazy, and deserve to be poor. It is this false myth that creates and falsely justifies racism and classism in America.
A great book about U.S. history and the misleading way it is taught is Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen.
-Scott Hughes