Citizen Brand

Homelessness

I can't imagine being homeless. Can you?

Here are two different approaches working to call attention to the homeless who live among us every day. The first one is this video produced by our IPREX partner in Miami, Great Communicators.

Fight Hunger

Sean Penn in a simple but powerful psa on hunger.

Help fight hunger!

We can all pitch in today and do our part to help fight hunger.  You may think it doesn't matter if you write a letter or an email to your senator or member of Congress.  It does.  It certainly matters if you always sit back and assume others will do it for you.  I received this email today from one of America's great non-profits - Second Harvest.  They need our help in trying to make sure Congress doesn't shortchange those among us who need help to make sure they have some food each day - something most of us take for granted.  I will just reprint the email copy here:

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN WASHINGTON
Thank you for advocating for a strong Nutrition Title in the Farm Bill.  Your work is paying off!  Last week, the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee approved its version of the Farm Bill, which provides an additional $4.2 billion for the nutrition title of the Farm Bill, although funding for TEFAP and for the Food Stamp Program was slightly less than what was included in the House-passed bill in late July.  The full Senate is expected to consider the Farm Bill next week.
ACT NOW!

We need your help in securing additional funding in the Farm Bill for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Food Stamp Program.  We urge you to visit the Hunger Action Center today and write a letter to your Senators to communicate the importance of providing $250 million for TEFAP and indexing the amount for inflation.  Additionally, we need the Senate to strengthen and enhance the Food Stamp Program to help more Americans move from the brink of hunger to a more food secure life.Contact your State Senator today and urge him or her to support these important anti-hunger programs. You can use the Hunger Action Center to make your voice heard.

SPREAD THE WORD

Please pass this email along to colleagues, friends, family and supporters, and encourage them to use the Hunger Action Center to contact their Members of Congress on this important issue.
We can end hunger in America, but no one can do it alone.

Click here to take action.

Life on food stamps

Our incredible food bank here in Kansas City, Harvesters , has a great challenge for all of us to consider.  In order to focus on Hunger Awareness Week in June, the folks at Harvesters ask us to think about what it would be like to live a week on food stamps.

As they suggest, we may know what it’s like to have hunger pangs, but do we really know about the physical, emotional and social difficulties of poverty, food insecurity and hunger?

FightHunger.org

I wrote about this incredible project several weeks ago and now the videos to end child hunger by 2015 have been produced.  This one gets my early vote although all the ones I have watched thus far are powerful.  See the rest here.

People are hungry down the street and on the other side of the world.  Donate to your community food bank now and next month and the month after that.  No child should go hungry.

Shoot a video - fight hunger

Thanks to Britt over at Have Fun/Do Good for telling us about a great opportunity for all you aspiring movie producers out there.  Enter the Walk The World Viral Video Contest being put on by FightHunger.org.

They are looking for the best video that can be distributed virally to help in the global fight against hunger - the problem that may be the root cause for so many of our problems we face in the world today.

This is all part of the U.N.'s World Food Programme, an organization which is no stranger to the use of video.  Here is their video collection on YouTube.

Also on their site is a compelling link that takes us to Darfur.  I spent some time with this link and listened to the people who live there and to others who are working their to help one of the most troubled regions on our planet.  Spend a few minutes here when you can.

Other links to learn more about hunger and what we can do about it:

HungerWeb

The Hunger Site

WorldHunger.org

SecondHarvest.org

Harvesters

Fighting hunger is a never ending battle.  Try to find a way to do something to fight hunger throughout the year.

Guns or Butter

It's the age old economic argument - guns or butter.

Now, Samuel Loewenberg tell us in Salon that the hunger season has come early in Niger, yet another African country facing a pandemic of hunger.  And the guns or butter debate has taken on a new dynamic.  He points out that any aid directed toward fighting hunger tends to go to those countries torn by war as opposed to those who are at peace.  Loewenberg writes:

"It is often worse for a starving child to live in a country at peace and with a stable government, because war-torn countries attract most of the funding, said Morris.  (James Morris, who heads the World Food Programme) The hundreds of millions suffering from simple poverty are overlooked. Meanwhile, sites of horrendous conflict like Darfur, in Sudan, receive media attention, but usually only of the "it's horrible and there's nothing we can do about it" kind.

But in the case of peaceful Niger, and its neighbors in Western and Southern Africa, there is something that can be done -- and relatively cheaply, at that. In the seven countries in Southern Africa facing a hunger crisis, for instance, the WFP needs $637 million to feed Southern Africans for the next three years. So far it has only half that amount. The absence of that money is catastrophic: In Zambia, food distributions were halved in the week before Christmas.

To put these millions of dollars in perspective, the cost of the occupation in Iraq is more than $150 million a day. So five days of war, a work week, would feed more than 12 million people for three years."

Ironic isn't it?  If you live in an African country, pick up a gun and start a skirmish, you are more likely to get food aid than if you don't pick up a gun.  And if we put our guns down in Iraq for one week, we could make at least a dent in the hunger pandemic that is decimating an entire continent.

It's obvious that governments cannot solve this problem.  Where are the corporations and nonprofits ready to partner to solve this most basic of causes in our world.