Something New on World Food Day

Sorry for the delay, technical difficulties. ..moving right a long:

Today is World Food Day. Traditionally, this blog focuses on international issues and crises. Today, because here in the US it’s election season, I’m going to focus on the need at home. 1 in 6 Americans qualifies as “poor”. 1 in 5 of those Americans is a child that struggles with hunger. 16.1 million children in America don’t get enough to eat. 62% of American teachers see kids regularly come to school hungry because they don’t get enough to eat at home. With the ever widening income gap – the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer – this problem isn’t going away. It’s not like there is a lack of resources and food in America, the average American family throws away $1,600 worth of food in a year. To tackle the problem of hunger in America Share Our Strength, a non-profit determined to end childhood hunger in America, has two big campaigns: No Kid Hungry and Cooking Matters

No Kid Hungry works with schools, government officials, and families to break down the barriers that come between children and regular nutritious meals. They do this by connecting low-income families to food programs in their area, as well as connecting children with school breakfasts and summer meals.

Through its Cooking Matters program Share Our Strength seeks to educate families on how they can make healthy, tasty meals at home for less than a meal from McDonald’s Dollar Menu. With the help of volunteer culinary and nutrition experts, Cooking Matters course participants learn how to select nutritious and low-cost ingredients and prepare them in ways that provide the best nourishment possible to their families. Cooking Matters has a educational program called “Shopping Matters” that travels the country providing free guided grocery store tours that teach key food shopping skills like buying fruits and vegetables on a budget, comparing unit prices, reading food labels, and identifying whole grain foods.Tours are facilitated by a wide range of local volunteers who work as dietitians, community nutrition educators, culinary professionals, Extension agents, or staff of community agencies serving families in need.

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Finally, Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign works to shine a national spotlight on the crisis of childhood hunger in America, creating a powerful movement of individuals committed to bold action. The issue of hunger is an “out of sight, out of mind”-type issue for many Americans. While it’s believable, but rarely acknowledged, that malnutrition is crippling generation after generation of children around the world, when you hear it’s in your own backyard people seem stunned and amazed. So, advocacy & education play no small part in No Kid Hungry’s campaign. To learn more about the problem here in the US please visit their website.

Look forward to seeing specific page highlights and ways to get involved here in the near future. Again, sorry for the delay.

Plumpy’nut, Changing the Way the World Fights Famine

Plumpy’nut is a peanut-based paste in a plastic wrapper for treatment of severe acute malnutrition. It is made of peanut paste, vegetable oil, powdered milk, powdered sugar, vitamins, and minerals. This simple concoction manufactured by Nutriset, a French company, is changing the way malnutrition is dealt with in children, and by extension, changing the way the world deals with food shortages and famine.

Before the development of Plumpy’nut and supplements like it children needed to be hospitalized for extended periods of time to receive intravenous fluids. There are often hundreds and sometimes thousands of children suffering from malnutrition when food shortages occur. All of these children used to have to be crammed together with their families in hospitals and make-shift health centers. They all needed to be tended to by doctors. With the arrival of innovative solutions like Plumpy’nut only the most extreme cases of malnutrition require hospitalization. That means less doctors, less nurses, less beds, less tents, less medical equipment to transport and maintain. Overall, it means fighting famine just got a whole lot cheaper.

Take for example the current crisis in the Sahel belt of western Africa. A number of unfortunate factors have come together to create a devastating food shortage. It has not yet crossed into the realm of famine but is skirting that very thin line. Labels aside, this shortage is leaving thousands of young children suffering from acute malnutrition. With Plumpy’nut in hand aid workers can not only treat children at hospitals and aid centers but, since Plumpy’nut doesn’t require refrigeration and comes wrapped in foil parents are able to feed it to their children on their own. Because of this it’s possible that with enough support the various groups, governments, and NGOs may yet be able to head of another terrible famine in Africa.

If you are interested in joining the fight against famine you can give to World Vision’s hunger fund and your donation will provide 5 times its value in life-saving emergency foods like Plumpy’nut, along with seeds, livestock, and other items that combat food shortages and hunger.

Children Are Becoming the Target of Ethnic Cleansing

Ethnic cleansing  is taking place along the border of Sudan and South Sudan that mirrors the genocide in Darfur.  Last week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof sneaked into Nuba mountains to document what is happening.  The military has bombed civilian villages, and uniformed Sudanese soldiers have kidnapped, raped, and murdered innocent men, women, and children.  The military purposefully destroys water supplies, kill livestock, and ruins crops, while the government is attempting to block all foreign aid to the area in the hopes of starving the people.

Sudanese soldiers have been reported using racial epithets and saying that they want to “finish off  the black people”, referring to the darker skin color of the Nuban people.  Some people speculate the violence is really because the majority of the Sudanese population is Muslim, and Nuba has a larger Christian population.  Other’s believe the government of Sudan is using these prejuidices – both the racism and religious discrimination – to manipulate it’s Arab Muslim population into doing its dirty work, and punishing the Nuban people for backing an armed uprising against Sudanese government.

A Nuban girl with her baby brother, in the cave where they live, hiding from the indiscriminate bombings of Sudanese government.

Typically, these attacks have been indiscriminate, killing anything and everything.  Now it seems as if children are becoming specific targets of violence in an attempt to remove all black Africans from Sudan.  World Vision has reported children arriving in refugee camps across the border in South Sudan carrying dead siblings, or riddled with bullet wounds in the arms of adult survivors.  Starvation is a tactic that inherently targets children.  Their growing bodies require more food, and they are much more susceptible to disease as a consequence of hunger than adults are.

In response to this, World Vision is scaling up emergency relief efforts – including delivery of food, provision of health care, and improvement of water and sanitation infrastructure – in South Sudan in attempt to care for those fleeing the violence in Sudan.  World Vision has set up a fund specifically to serve the people of Sudan and South Sudan.  Gifts to this fund multiply four times to help provide food, clean water, health care, emergency relief, and more to nearly 1.5 million people in Sudan and South Sudan.

A boy suffering from hunger is admitted to a World Vision supplementary feeding center in South Sudan.

You can also help by spreading the word.  Because of the level of danger it is difficult for reporters to get to the Nuba area to report on the violence – Kristof kept his whereabouts and intentions under-wraps until his column was ready to be published, and presumably, he was somewhere safe again.  The more people aware of violence the more emergency relief can be provided to people who need it, the more pressure can be put on the government of Sudan to not only allow aid to civilians, but also to stop murdering them.  It is much more difficult to commit atrocities such as these against civilians when the eye of the world is upon you.

World Day of Social Justice

Today is the World Day of Social Justice.  For some, “social justice” is a vague term that can be twisted to mean just about anything.  So, with the help of World Vision, I’m going to try and define what social justice should mean for Christians.  Hopefully, this will remove some of the cumbersome ideologies that can so easily sneak between a well-meaning Christian and action on behalf of the vulnerable and oppressed.

Social justice is a fundamental aspect of Christian discipleship, and a mandate of our faith.  Use Jesus as an example – His entire ministry was based around serving those who needed Him.  Repeatedly, He sought out the company of the outcast, and the marginalized.  Throughout the Bible, God clearly shows His great love and compassion for the vulnerable.   In the Bible, references to “justice” mean “to make right” – it’s more about loving your neighbor as yourself than our modern term with its connotations of vengeance and exacting punishment.  The biblical definition of justice is rooted in the nature of God, and in the same way that He is just and loving we are called to “do justice and live in love.”

Often it seems like Christians get preoccupied with the “what” of social justice.  When you start with the “what”, the problems, it’s easy to get sidetracked by the issues – contraception, abortion, labor laws, taxation, social protections, safety nets, etc. –  and you quickly lose sight of the “who”.  When the “what” is the starting point, our ideologies are able to trump our theology and completely hijack whatever good intentions were there in the first place.

It is the “who” we are called to address first.  The “what” should be predicated by the “who”.  When Christians step back and identify who we are supposed to be serving – the weak, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the disinherited – and strive to keep the people and not the politics as our main focus, it’s much easier to stay on track.  With people at the center of our plans and actions, clearer goals can be set and realized.  Christians would then be able to experience the direct, life-saving impact they are capable of having when they are free to act instead of being bogged down by larger-than-life problems, weighty ideals,  and frustrating “big picture” solutions.

Social justice isn’t about lofty ideals or contentious policies.  Social justice is about bringing the kingdom of God to a fallen world.  Every action, no matter how small, creates a “kingdom space” here on earth.  Advocacy for social justice is a tool for God’s people to bring about the kingdom come.  Every action that stands in the way of  a social injustice, whether it’s human trafficking, human rights abuses, infants dying needlessly from disease and malnutrition, or less obvious injustices like racism,  bullying, or discrimination in any form, brings a small taste of what God intends for the world.  The call for social justice is rooted in Scripture and based on the character of God, and should be something Christians are committed to as an essential part of our faith.

“For Christians, the pursuit of social justice for the poor and oppressed is the decisive mark of being people who submit to the will and way of God” – Tim Dearborn in “Reflections on Advocacy and Justice.”