“It is important for people to realize that we can make progress against world hunger, that world hunger is not hopeless. The worst enemy is apathy.”
– Reverend David Beckmann
And sealed within apathy is the feeling of helplessness with a smattering of “it will always be this way” thrown at us on a daily basis.
Sunflowers shouldn’t grow in a sidewalk grate but they can and do. If I believed it would always be this way, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do which is teach people to garden, collect simple, sustainable methods for gardening, or plant even one seed. Gardening teaches me that nothing is impossible or unchangeable.
Life in general IS change. Without change we could not grow, heal from illness, bake bread, fall in love, have children. All those and more demand that something changes. And true to the life energy itself, my personal career path has meandered onto a completely different territory since August, one that is allowing me more time to write on the book that set this blog in motion.
The purpose for this blog and the book remain–seeking ways to end hunger and poverty at the most basic and empowering level by growing our own food.
Over the past year, the human species surpassed one billion people living in poverty and malnutrition. Yet, we continue to grow more than enough food to feed every person on this planet. How can that disparity occur? Part of it may be that we as a species don’t yet BELIEVE we can end hunger and poverty. But there are voices that continue to stir the winds of doubt and point toward an ending of this most vile of human ills. One such document is the Millennium Development Goals.
In September 2000, 189 world leaders adopted the Millenium Development Goals (or MDGs) as part of the Millennium Declaration, agreed to at the United Nations Millennium Summit.
The MDG’s set an unprecedented global framework for development that is a crucial step towards ending poverty and inequality by 2015.
The eight MDG goals include:
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDs, malaria, and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Develop a global partnership for development
To learn more and to participate in an action today, go to www.standagainstpoverty.org and be counted.
Yes, we still have a ways to go but the first step is seeing a better way, a solution even if it hasn’t happened yet. We need to inform ourselves of what hasn’t worked in the past by deviating from old ruts like some of these recent news stories point out:
- According to the new report from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), global trade in the past 20 years has neither improved working conditions or living standards in many developing countries.
- The World Health Organization estimates that, at any given moment, 20 million children are suffering from severe forms of food deprivation as a consequence of various crises and food aid needs to be of a quality that will provide nourishment quickly. An article in Foreign Policy magazine questions how healthy fortified, blended wheat, corn, or soy flours are to counteract malnutrition even though they are the mainstay of many emergency food programs. Critics point out a more nutritious supplement should be routinely provided as well as the need to utilize local markets for staple items.
- A World Summit on Food Security will be held in November of this year in Rome. The goals? Not so different from the MDG’s.
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, who proposed the World Summit on Food Security, hopes the participants will agree on key actions to tackle this crisis. According to Diouf:
“The silent hunger crisis — affecting one sixth of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world.”
If you are interested in the goals of the World Summit on Food Security, check out the website.
I guess I’m old-fashioned or naive or maybe both. I just get dizzy reading and re-reading all these op ed pieces and statistical dire predictions. They just reinforce old beliefs that hunger is inevitable if you are poor, live in third world countries or in the midst of war or political conflict (also believed to be inevitable and not one I espouse.) So I can’t help wondering: how much money do we waste on conferences and summits to TALK about the problem, thus reinforcing the problem, that could better be spent actually giving folks the tools to grow food?
With that in mind, I’m taking a two month sabbatical from this blog to collate and complete the book that I was writing when I initiated these posts a year ago. A number of people have asked when my book on survival gardening will be done. It’s been in process far too long because even I doubted it would make a difference in this vast and complicated and totally unreasonable error in humanity’s thinking called hunger.
I don’t see it that way anymore. My book is a piece of the puzzle to end hunger. It may be just a tiny piece in an enormous and complicated planetary puzzle, but we all know that we need each and every piece to see the whole picture. It is also a statement that I no longer doubt there is an end to hunger. I need to do my part. I need to be the example that all of us, projecting our energy away from doubt and toward a desired outcome, can accomplish much more than all the conferences, hand wringing op ed pieces, overwhelming statistical reports and heart-wrenching documentaries.
From time to time I’ll upload things of interest while leaving old posts on the website. As soon as the writing is complete, we’ll have one heck of a party to celebrate and you’ll all be invited. I made a promise months ago to put these materials together and offer them to organizations working to end hunger and poverty. I need to make good on that promise. Back in 60 days…..
Please continue to support the What If? Foundation, Hunger Grow Away, E.C.H.O. and Tripura Foundation.
– Mother Teresa
Blessings, peace, thank you so much for reading, and practice seeing the world healed. — Yvonne
