第4章 Break the Fast

PART I Morning

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

-A. A. MILNE, WINNIE THE POOH

Wake-up Call

Mornings find most of us stumbling around, starting a pot of coffee, pouring the cereal, or keeping the toast from burning. Some of us are getting the morning news, mentally running through appointments and to-do lists, or just trying to get the kids off to school or ourselves out the door. We're usually too groggy to make the connection between breakfast and something exciting happening that day.

But here's an eye-opener: breakfast literally means "breaking the fast"-ending a period without food. Although most of us feel hopeless when we see images of famine-children with matchstick arms and skeletal parents-it is now possible to break the fast of starvation and ease the most severe hunger in our world. New early-warning systems (of coming drought, for example) are giving the world a heads-up that we can use to avert starvation that is unprecedented. The United Nations now has a Central Emergency Response Fund to respond more quickly and effectively to emergencies.

Together we can "break the fast" of acute hunger and starvation to achieve UN Millennium Development Goal 1: eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, with a target of reducing by half by 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

We still need to make sure that there is enough emergency relief money, that food aid is delivered quickly, and that recipient countries are prepared to distribute it effectively. We can focus attention on all of the hunger emergencies, not just the few that capture media and political attention, and we can support long-term solutions to the problems of ongoing hunger so that people are less vulnerable when emergencies of drought and famine strike. That's exciting.

Imagine This…

It would take only pennies. If developed countries gave a penny more per person every three days to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, we could have enough to meet the urgent need for food to prevent starvation during emergencies, according to Oxfam International.

The United States currently gives $10-the cost of a movie ticket or a couple of rentals-per person each year for humanitarian assistance. Because we are the richest country in the world, we give more than any other, but we give a smaller amount per person than do nine other countries.

Getting Off to a Good Start

LEARN

Read more about hunger in the United States and around the world in Bread for the World's annual report on the state of hunger, which can be downloaded or ordered <bread.org> Explore the other resources prepared by the Bread for the World Institute.

Visit the UN World Food Programme <wfp.org> to learn more about world hunger, what WFP is doing about it, and how you can help.

Get to know such organizations as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities <cbpp.org>, the Food Research and Action Center <frac.org> the Institute for Food and Development Policy <foodfirst.org>, Oxfam International <oxfam.org>, RESULTS <results.org>, and World Vision <worldvision.org>-all of which have Web sites, reports, newsletters, and conferences that are excellent information and action resources.

Have some serious fun with children. Download Food Force, a video game developed by the UN World Food Programme to teach children about world hunger <food-force.com>. Players work to get food aid to a fictional country in need, overcoming challenges and discovering the thrill of working to solve a serious global problem.

Participate in Oxfam's Fast for a World Harvest to deepen your firsthand understanding of hunger. Involve others by organizing a world hunger banquet to dramatize global food distribution, coordinating a one-meal fast and donating the cost of the skipped meal, or planning a full-day fast and collecting pledges. Visit Oxfam for planning resources.

Watch the one-hour documentary Silent Killer: The Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger (2005) with family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, or members of your place of worship and talk about how you can respond <silentkillerfilm.org>.

Gather a group from your religious community to study hunger and your faith tradition's response. Use resources prepared by your religious body or other resources such as Hunger No More, Bread for the World's curriculum for churches and synagogues, and materials from MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger <mazon.org>.

Refer to community kitchens instead of the more dated term soup kitchens, which conjures up stereotypes of who is hungry and what is served. Community kitchens reminds us that we are all part of a community and that this is where some in our community come for a free, nourishing meal and others provide food from their own overflowing pantries and gardens.

Check out the other chapters in this book that discuss various aspects of hunger: chapters 6, 9, 10, and 17.

CONTRIBUTE

Click on <fighthunger.org> or <thehungersite.com> to help feed a child. It's free, it takes only a few seconds, and you can do it every day. You click, and Web site advertisers contribute.

Help the UN World Food Programme feed more hungry people. Every dollar donated for emergency operations can provide one day of food rations for a family of four (in some countries each dollar feeds even more). For instance, just $99 donated can purchase five thousand cups of rice to feed an entire community or support recovery projects in which food aid is used to pay people to rebuild their communities in the wake of humanitarian tragedies <wfp.org>.

Understanding hunger at a gut level can change lives. While in college Alex Counts participated in a one-day fast sponsored by Oxfam International and became committed to ending hunger. He volunteered with the antihunger lobby RESULTS, later becoming its legislative director. A trip to Bangladesh ignited his passion for the potential of microcredit-small loans to help people earn a living so that they can produce or purchase enough food and have the resources to withstand Bangladesh's frequent emergencies. Alex now heads the Grameen Foundation, helping millions of families access microcredit and have enough to eat. And it all started with his own one-day fast.

Donate food to community food pantries to meet the urgent needs of hungry people living in the United States, including 13 million hungry children. Find a local food pantry by entering your ZIP code at America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest network of food banks <secondharvest.org>.

Engage school, community, and religious groups in events such as Church World Services CROP Hunger Walk <churchworldservice.org/crop>, Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale <strength.org>, and The Souper Bowl of Caring's Souper Bowl Sunday <souperbowl.org> to raise money or collect food for programs serving people who are hungry.

Spur donations of good, leftover food. Encourage restaurants, hotels, caterers, and even universities to donate usable food instead of throwing it away. Done right, it does not violate health code guidelines. For more information about the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996, which protects donors from liability, go to the America's Second Harvest Web site <secondharvest.org>.

Prepare and serve meals in a community kitchen for some of our nation's 35 million hungry people.

Lend a hand. Volunteer at a local food bank or other program that serves people who are hungry. Visit <secondharvest.org> to find a local food bank or food rescue organization that can use your help.

Start or help strengthen a food pantry, community kitchen, or other emergency feeding program, with help from World Hunger Year's resource Serving Up Justice: How to Design an Emergency Feeding Program and Build Community Food Security <worldhungeryear.org>.

Write letters to your newspaper and your members of Congress to focus their attention on hunger crises and urge immediate responses to provide humanitarian assistance to ward off starvation and promote long-term solutions. The organizations listed in the "Learn" section provide information and sample letters.

Encourage teachers to present lessons on hunger. Check out the resources from Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger <feedingminds.org> and a high school curriculum from kNOw HUNGER <knowhunger.org>.

Organize World Food Day <fao.org> activities in your community to help people learn more about causes of and solutions to world hunger.

LIVE

Serve at least one meatless dinner a week, using nonanimal sources of protein that require fewer of the world's resources to produce, or commit to another lifestyle change regarding all the foods you eat: avoid overpackaged foods, or become a "locavore," buying your food from local sources.

Assess how much food is wasted in your household and find a way to reduce it.

Actions Make a Difference

Norman Borlaug, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his efforts to end world hunger and increase international prosperity, is credited with saving 1 billion people from starvation. As director of the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico and head of an international team of scientists, he created a "green revolution" that developed improved wheat seed, higher-yield rice, and more-efficient use of fertilizer and water to produce larger food crops in Mexico, Pakistan, India, and elsewhere. While a professor at Texas A&M University, Borlaug founded the World Food Prize in 1986 to recognize others who are helping increase the world's food supply and end hunger.