Do You Know What the World Needs Now?

By Fion Chua

To answer the resounding question in your head asking, “What does the world need now?”- it needs more than just “love, sweet love”, as quoted from the popular song, “What the World Needs Now is Love” with lyrics written by Hal David in 1965. Food for the soul is definitely important, but food to fill one’s stomach is equally important.

Vast amounts of food are produced each day, and equally vast amounts of food are wasted at the same rate.

Assuming that most of you reading this post right now are residing in first-world countries with electricity supply and an internet connection, as long as you feel your stomach rumbling, simply getting up and walking to the kitchen would likely mean satisfying your cravings for the moment.

However, as you munch on your daily bowl of cereal and milk for breakfast, has it ever occurred to you that there is an approximated 66 million children from developing countries going to school for classes on an empty stomach? In Africa alone, there are approximately 23 million such children. According to the United Nations (UN), there are about 21,000 deaths every day and one every four seconds due to hunger or hunger-related causes as well, amongst which most are children.

Where exactly does the problem lie, then?

(Source: http://southasia.oneworld.net/archive/globalheadlines/most-hungry-people-in-the-world-are-rural-poor#.Up7QGsRBN8s)

Based on www.poverty.com, the issue is that “hungry people are trapped in severe poverty”, meaning that they are unable to fill their stomachs because they are too poor to do so. For adults, this in turn means a decreased ability to work and earn sufficient money to support their families, thus starting a downward spiral in which they are trapped in until the moment they take their last breath.

It is definitely not an easy feat to solve a worldwide issue that has been ongoing for years. It also goes without saying that stopping world hunger overnight is impossible; in fact, saying that it is a far-fetched goal to be accomplished is an understatement.

In spite of that, everyone can definitely play a part in working towards this common goal. Baby steps are attainable, even if each person takes just one at a time.

There are a number of campaigns and causes out there set up to combat global hunger, Watch Hunger Stop being just one of them. It is a work of collaboration between Michael Kors, a world-renowned fashion designer based in New York City of the USA, and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP). By simply buying a watch costing USD 295, for example, Michael Kors will donate USD 25 to the WFP, funding 100 meals in the process.

(Source: http://thecitizensoffashion.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/watch-hunger-stop-a-campaign-by-michael-kors.jpg?w=800)

Other suggestions for everyone out there, would be to simply set aside a fraction of your monthly pay, or even a few dollars of your weekly allowance, should you be a student that is not currently working, to help in the funding of ‘food for work’ or ‘food for education’ programmes which feed adults and children respectively for working or attending classes. These effective projects encourage the poor and hungry to build infrastructure and gain useful knowledge that play a part in helping them escape from hunger and poverty worldwide.

It is never too late to start keeping the less fortunate in mind, even as you go about your daily grind and tuck into your next meal.