world Hunger

Look here first

The link posted above details how the U.N plans to fight world hunger.

But how will the U.N. dig up enough PR to make this strategy a success? In my opinion, people across the world have become numb to the fact that while they are standing in line ordering their fourth meal of the day at McDonalds, thousand of people are starving around the world. It’s not entirely their fault, we have collectively become skeptical of donate a dollar to save the world techniques as well; most of them are scams for con artists to make a quick profit. How does an organization, even as big as the UN, put a twist on their donation fund to make people interested? How do they keep themselves from being filed away as just another company like The Red Cross or The Salvation Army? Info-mercials have the look-at-the-child-you-are-helping thing covered. Donation bins outside of malls are done all the time. We don’t pay attention to TV or radio commercials all that much anymore.

And it’s not just the UN’s fault for not being as innovative as they could be.

I believe America as a whole also has an “If I can’t see it, I don’t believe it” approach to world hunger and poverty. People know it exists, some try to help, but how often do they see the specific results of their charity? They are too focused on their own problems to think about someone else’s. Why worry about someone thousands of miles away that you will never meet? How will this $1 make any more of a difference? World hunger existed last year when I donated, and it didn’t go away…why should I donate this year if the problem is going to exist again next year? It’s sickening to think that some people will actually use these statements as excuses.

I think the UN is going to have to embark in more than just an internet campaign to raise $6.7 billion this year. Hopefully giving will outweigh Scrooging this holiday season, but I have my doubts.

• In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called “absolute poverty”
• Every year 15 million children die of hunger
• For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years
• Throughout the 1990′s more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!
• The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you’ve entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.
• One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture
• The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world’s hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy
• Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion – a majority of humanity – live on less than $1 per day, while the world’s 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world’s people. UNICEF
• 3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
• In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of 6 elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.
• In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.
• The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
• One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
• Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
• In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
• Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide – a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death
• About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age
• To satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.
• The assets of the world’s three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
• Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger
• It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.