A War on Hunger

"A child dying every six seconds because of undernourishment related problems is the world's largest tragedy and scandal," stated Joseph Dioff, in a press release on Tuesday, September 14.  Mr. Dioff is the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations.

 

The UN estimates that globally 925 million people are undernourished in 2010, the vast majority of whom live in Asia and Africa. The proportion of undernourished people remains the highest in sub-Saharan Africa where nearly 30% of the population is undernourished.  In Malawi alone there are an estimated 3.9 million people without enough to eat. (To learn more about world hunger, visit our links page.)

 

With numbers like these, the problem seems completely hopeless. Most of us are left to wonder,  "What can I possibly do?"

 

Last summer a little girl walked into our backyard in Malawi, a tiny little girl, very dirty and very hungry.  Debbie Brownlow, board member, was visiting in Malawi at the time.  She wanted to choose a child to sponsor and had picked out several that were really cute and clean and happy.  But it seemed that each smiling child she chose already had a sponsor.  Then she spotted Fera, dirty and sad.  "No one will want that child," she thought.  And so she started sponsoring Fera.

Left: Fera when she first arrived on our campus. Right: Fera this past summer.

As you can see from the photos, a year of good nutrition has made a tremendous impact on little Fera. She is stronger, her eyes are brighter, and she has learned to smile. She has an opportunity for an education and a future. She is one less child to factor into the UN's statistics next year.

 

Debbie couldn't end world hunger, but she could end hunger for one child.

 

For the first time in 15 years, the number of people suffering from hunger worldwide has declined.  Projects such as our Children's Nutrition Program and Conservation Farming Techniques are having an impact on the availability of food to the world's most vulnerable people.  Thanks to a recent partnership with Texas Tech University, we will soon begin raising a flock of goats to provide meat for the children as part of a research project studying the effects of regular meat consumption on anemia.

 

There is hope! Hope is being reflected in the statistics, but better yet, hope is being seen on the faces of the children on our campuses in Malawi. World hunger is too great a problem to take in all at once, but when we consider the issue child by child and community by community, we find there really is something we can do to have an impact.