infinite hope

People who are chronically hungry are undernourished. They don’t eat enough to get the energy they need to lead active lives. Their undernourishment makes it hard to study, work or otherwise perform physical activities. Undernourishment is particularly harmful for women and children. Undernourished children do not grow as quickly as healthy children. Mentally, they may develop more slowly. Constant hunger weakens the immune system and makes them more vulnerable to diseases and infections. Mothers living with constant hunger often give birth to underweight and weak babies, and are themselves facing increased risk of death.

Every day, millions of people around the world eat only the bare minimum of food to keep themselves alive. Every night, they go to bed not certain whether there will be enough food to eat tomorrow. This uncertainty about where the next meal will come from is called ‘food insecurity’. FAO defines food insecurity as:

“A situation that exists when people lack secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life.”

On average, a person needs about 1800 kcal per day as a minimum energy intake. 

Learn more about chronic hunger from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

…Despite significant reductions in extreme poverty, the world will find it difficult to eradicate hunger, however, which is another target of MDG 1. The persistence of hunger is forcing policymakers to address problems such as access to food and high food prices. The Food and Agriculture Organisation has been asked to undertake a comprehensive review to see what policies could lead to a reduction in the proportion of people going hungry, which has plateaued at 16%.

Sub-Saharan Africa chalked up the best record for improvement in primary school enrolment, but the world is far from achieving universal primary education, MDG 2. Burundi, Madagascar, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Togo and Tanzania are among the countries that have achieved, or are nearing the goal of universal primary education. The abolition of school fees has contributed to progress in many of these countries, the UN said.

To achieve universal primary education, children must complete a full cycle of primary schooling. Currently, 87 out of 100 children in poor countries complete primary education.

On gender equality and the empowerment of women, the report said girls are gaining ground in education, though unequal access persists in many regions. Some 96 girls were enrolled in primary and secondary schools for every 100 boys in 2009, a significant improvement since 1999, when the ratios were 91 and 88, respectively. However, only three regions – the Caucasus and central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and south-east Asia – have achieved gender parity in primary education. Exceptionally, in eastern Asia, girls slightly outnumber boys in primary school.

Aid, which comes under MDG 8, reached $128.7bn last year, a record high, but this was still $19bn short of the commitments made at the Gleneagles summit in 2005. Africa is shortchanged as the UN says preliminary estimates show it will receive only $11bn out of the $25bn increase promised at Gleneagles “due mainly to the underperformance of some European donors”.

Although gains have been made across the board, including a reduction in child mortality, a decline in new HIV infections and improved access to drinking water, the UN urged countries to target those hardest to reach – the poorest of the poor and those disadvantaged because of their sex, age, ethnicity or a disability. It said the gap between urban and rural areas remains daunting.

“We have success stories to point to,” the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said in Geneva. “But achieving all the MDGs will require extra effort. Even where we have seen rapid growth, as in east Asia and other parts of the developing world, progress is not universal, nor are the benefits evenly shared. Stubbornly high unemployment persists in rich and poor countries alike. And in many cases, the wealth gap is widening – between the prosperous and the marginalised, between urban and rural. Solid gains in school enrolment and gender parity hardly signal mission accomplished.”

Read more…

nothingshortof:

therealestsocksinthegame:

vindikateor:

str8nochaser:

Belo, [Brazil,] a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.

In America, they would call this communism. I thought this was the most beautiful thing I have ever read.

We NEED to do this in America. It is positively shameful how we let our own brothers and sisters suffer when we have more than enough to feed each and every one of them.  

Reblogging to read later.

“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.”
CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL

I love this quotation, because it gets across a lot of my convictions pretty clearly. We need to stop treating people like economic units, and start treating them like people. A basic tenet of humanity is NOT “thou shalt contribute to the local economy”. Should people be thrown to the wayside because they can’t purchase food? I like the way Belo is going about it. 

(Source: quixotess)