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.

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.”

Happy Freerice Week!

February 6-11 is global Freerice week.  Freerice is a game set up by the World Food Programme, a UN organization.  It’s a quiz game that tests your knowledge of a variety of subjects ranging from vocabulary to foreign languages to geography – just about anything. It’s free to play, and by playing you are actually donating food to hungry children around the world.  Each right answer earns you 10 grains of rice, which are donated to kids in countries where the WFP operates.  As you play, you get to watch your rice bowl gradually fill up.  When you’re finished, you hit the donate button and viola!  A hungry child gets a hot meal because of you.

To celebrate Freerice Week, Freerice is invoking the “6 degrees of Separation” law – each person is connected to every other person in the world through, at most, 6 other people – and calling it “6 Degrees of Freerice“.  The idea is that you start a Freerice group of 6 people, who are each supposed to recruit 6 of their friends, and so on.  The goal is to get as many people aware of, and playing, Freerice as possible.  With that many people playing Freerice, hundreds, maybe thousands, of hungry children can be fed without anyone having to donate a dollar.  Freerice is throwing in a little added incentive:  a Flip cam and Freerice shirt will go to the founder of the group with the most members and to the founder of the group that raises the most rice.  The members of the largest group will also be on the Freerice Hall of Fame until Freerice Week next year – when they will have to defend their title.

Freerice is gaming for a cause at its finest.  There’s nothing to lose, and even if you don’t win the big prize, you’re filling hungry little bellies.  So, go create a group, guilt your friends into joining, and have fun.  This week, help take a stand against hunger.  Happy Freericing Everyone!

A Little Bit of Encouragement

The UN announced yesterday that the famine in Somalia is technically over.  The number of people in need of emergency humanitarian assistance has dropped from 4 million to 2.3 million.  “Long-awaited rains, coupled with substantial agricultural inputs and the humanitarian response deployed in the last six months, are the main reasons for this improvement,” José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya, after visiting southern Somalia.  “However, the crisis is not over,” he added. “It can only be resolved with a combination of rains and continued, coordinated, long-term actions that build up the resilience of local populations and link relief with development.”

While this news is good, it should be seen as encouragement to keep going, not a reason to pat ourselves on the back, hang up our hats, and consider it a job well done.  The job is far from finished.  There are still 325,000 children who are acutely malnourished. Everyday that this continues to be the case their growing brains and bodies are stunted, and they are increasingly susceptible to illness.  While lives have been saved and progress has been made, the goal has always been to make communities self-reliant and drought-resistant, not just to get them through a rough patch.  Through work-for-cash, and food-voucher programs FAO, UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and international non-governmental organizations have employed locals to rehabilitate or build irrigation canals and community green spaces that will help to make the areas more drought and climate resistant.  NGO’s have also been holding classes for farmers to teach them more productive and sustainable farming methods.

Please continue to pray for rains and favorable growing weather for the people of Somalia and the rest of East Africa.  This is something that only God can provide, and no amount of sustainable farming can make up for it.  Also, pray for protection for the people, and an end to violence that has crippled Somalia for almost a decade.  Many people are afraid to bring their families home from refugee camps because they do not believe they will be safe.

Support non-profits such as World Vision, and the World Food Programme as they work with the people in of East Africa so that they may soon find themselves completely self-reliant, as well as mostly drought-resistant.  Everyone in the “aid industry” wants to see themselves worked out of a job. In places like East Africa, they are on track to making this a reality.  This is all good news, but the job is not over yet.  Take it as the encouragement that it is:  Hunger and poverty are not issues too big to tackle, they just take time and effort, and in one of the most vulnerable corners of the world we are finally making tangible progress against them.