World Food Week 2012

It's World Food Week (& tomorrow is World Food Day); this year's theme is Agricultural Cooperatives: Key to Feeding the World. Please visit this page for information, many good links, & activities that you can participate in with your family & friends. A visit to the World Food Programme site is a good idea, too, for action ideas.

(illustration via Agence Eureka)

World Food Week 2011

Yesterday was the official World Food Day 2011; World Food Week activities continue this week.

“FOOD PRICES – FROM CRISIS TO STABILITY” has been chosen as this year’s World Food Day theme to shed some light on this trend and what can be done to mitigate its impact on the most vulnerable. Price swings, upswings in particular, represent a major threat to food security in developing countries. Hardest-hit are the poor. According to the World Bank, in 2010-2011 rising food costs pushed nearly 70 million people into extreme poverty.

On World Food Day 2011, let us look seriously at what causes swings in food prices, and do what needs to be done to reduce their impact on the weakest members of global society.--FAO website

For actions you can take & multi-media events, please see here. To join the 1 Billion Hungry Project on Facebook, click here.

(photograph by Olga)

Hunger Bytes

A billion for a billion. An international video competition sponsored by the World Food Programme--go for it. Entries accepted through 31 December 2009. Watch it, pass it along. Thank you.

[Southern Sudanese women drag bags of grain to a central collection point dropped by WFP chartered airplane in the village of Pochalla, Jonglei state © Peter Martell/IRIN]

"How unpleasant, must we talk about Darfur?"

Yes, we agree; how terribly unpleasant it all is: Darfur, Congo, Burma, etc. How very seven years ago (in the case of Darfur).

But you know what strikes us as really bad manners? Allowing people to starve, be brutalized, raped & remaining silent. The fact remains that these things are happening & as we've said before, it's in your self-interest to do something about it. No one is asking you to give your entire life over to a cause; what's 15 minutes? We waste that x 2 nearly every day watching a Seinfeld repeat. (Not all activists are humorless wretches--truly.) There are links all over this page for anyone to visit. We hope you will....

We continue this week with some repeats from last year because we are still unwell & there are some lovely photos that most people haven't seen. We'll check email every day. Thanks so much.

[school children at Ain Sero & women collecting firewood near Kutum by Susan Burgess-Lent/DPDO/all rights reserved. Taken in May 2008; things are much worse now.]