Last night, the Luther College ONE Campaign/Hunger Concerns organization had a great opportunity to listen to the founder of Bread for the World, Art Simon, speak at The Church of Corpus Christi in Roseville, Minnesota.
Simon started out his speech by saying, “you can make a significant impact on ending hunger.” We have the opportunity to truly speak out for what out believe in, which is the only way to inspire others.
He also said that the reason he founded Bread was to challenge Christians to lobby on behalf of those effected by hunger and poverty. This was one of the first non-partisan citizen lobby organizations, and you can learn more about it here.
This was a perfect opportunity for me, as a Campus Outreach Ambassador, to network with other people interested in ending global poverty. It was awesome to also meet students from other campuses and be able to finally introduce myself. This helped us get the ONE name out there, and share what we do!
We drove for a totally of 6 hours in a day to learn more about how ONE’s partner organizations, including Bread for the World, are helping make poverty history.
Every year, OCC offers a prize to the school with the best “Stand Up and Take Action” event in October, and this year is no different. Plan your event for October 16-18, and then tell us about it for a chance to win a 4×6 foot ONE banner. You get 2,500 OCC points just for holding an event, and we’ll have some bonus points for the winning school, too.
On October 16, 17 and 18th, millions of people around the world will “Stand Up” against hunger and poverty in city plazas, schools, concert halls and churches. Stand Up & Take Action, coordinated by the UN Millennium Campaign and GCAP, is a global event in which citizens urge their leaders to keep their promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and work locally to ensure food security and climate justice. We are hearing from organizers around the world about the many Stand Up events planned – concerts, silent vigils, tree plantings, campus rallies — even a pumpkin drop. To join an event, go to the Stand Up website and click on events in your region.
If you would like to organize a Stand Up event, just register on the website and describe your event — large or small. You can download Stand Up signs, brochures, logos, banners, t-shirt designs and more. Remember to report back on the number of people who participated, so they can be counted for the Guinness World Records. (Last year, 116 million people participated in Stand Up — shattering the record for the greatest number of people taking action for a social cause in a set time.) Stand Up participants are invited to take photos and upload them to the website, which will run a continuous stream of Stand Up pics and videos throughout the 3-day event. If you can’t join a “Stand Up” event on the ground, you can participate virtually by going to the website and clicking on “Act Online.”
Why focus on the Millennium Development Goals? In 2000, 189 countries, including the U.S., committed to achieving eight goals that would address poverty, health, education and environmental challenges by 2015. However, more than halfway to the deadline, major reductions in global poverty levels have begun to slow or even reverse. The UN’s 2009 Millennium Development Goals Report is both promising and disturbing. But we can turn the tide.
Stand Up is a once-a-year opportunity to join with millions of others speaking out against hunger and poverty. For inspiration, check out scenes from last year’s Stand Up mobilization. Join us!
Earn 500 OCC points for every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can earn an additional 2,500 points for a Partner Activity. Just hold on to your links that prove you’ve taken part in these actions, and once we launch OCC officially next week, submit them as a “Make Your Own Action.” Good luck!
-Emily
Every day World Food Programme staff negotiates deserts, swamps, jungles, and warzones — some of the most challenging terrain on the planet — getting food to the world’s hungriest. And even when our staff members are not risking their lives travelling, work as an aid worker can be dangerous.
On Monday, October 5, five of our staff were killed and several injured after what police called a suicide bomb attack at our office in Islamabad, Pakistan. This post and today’s action is dedicated to them, and the 12 other WFP employees who lost their lives in 2009 on the front lines in the fight against hunger.
On the Road is a video blog from the field, where our aid workers can talk to us about the world they see in their daily fight against hunger.
On the Road: Pakistan follows our staff during a time of conflict, where they experience how the displaced cope with their situation (particularly as a female who has lost her male family members in an Islamic state).
Action: Share this video post on your social networks, and help spread the word about the often dangerous work our staff wake up to every day.
Please feel free to also leave your thoughts, support and responses in the comment section of On the Road: Kenya.
The World Food Programme is the humanitarian agency on the frontline fighting hunger worldwide. We offer assistance in 74 countries, using food to help shattered communities rebuild their lives and futures.
The World Food Day Action Countdown forms part of our call to the billion people who are active online, to help the one billion people who are hungry: A Billion for a Billion!
Earn 500 OCC points for every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can earn an additional 2,500 points for a Partner Activity. Just hold on to your links that prove you’ve taken part in these actions, and once we launch OCC officially next week, submit them as a “Make Your Own Action.” Good luck!
-Emily
Action: Tweet the facts or post them to Facebook. Post and highlight why it’s important to put food in the hands of a woman!
1 billion people in the world are hungry; up to 60% of them are women.
Girls’ enrollment shoots up 28% on average when we introduce meals at schools.
Over half of all farmers worldwide are women (eight of 19 in Africa, six out of 10 in Asia).
WFP/ Riccardo Gangale. A mother in Rwanda works on a terracing project. WFP supports women who are revitalizing agricultural lands through Food for Assets programs.
On the flip side, women are also the key to unlocking sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty. Women not only cook for their families. They sow, reap and harvest food — comprising well over half of all farmers worldwide (eight of 19 in Africa, six out of 10 in Asia).
Our experience at the World Food Programme shows that in the hands of a woman, food is far more likely to reach the mouths of needy children. That’s why, in emergencies such as the disastrous flooding in the Philippines, we channel our relief through women whenever and wherever feasible. More than half of the people we feed, globally, are women and children.
WFP/ Marco Frattini. Joyce Banan is a farmer in Uganda, where WFP purchased over $53 million worth of food in 2008. She was able to provide education for her children up to the university level, only through the profits that she accrued with her farming business.
Women are also crucial to speed recovery after catastrophe strikes, and to work as partners in developing their communities so that they can withstand future shocks such as climate change-aggravated drought and flooding. Read Samya’s story.
That’s another reason we zero in on girls in our school meals programs, as experts agree that educating women and girls is the cornerstone of economic and social development and smashes the cycle of inherited hunger.
We’ve found that girls’ enrollment shoots up 28 percent on average when we introduce meals at schools, while take-home rations of cooking oil or maize raise the status of girls to “breadwinners” within their families, especially in societies where girls get “second shrift” in education behind the boys. Check out our October 4 post that tells the story of Fatuma, a young Somali refugee who — empowered by meals at school — bootstrapped her way into one of Kenya’s top private schools.
The World Food Programme is calling on you to take action in the days counting down to World Food Day, October 16. Each day we will issue a daily challenge as part of our Billion for a Billion campaign.
The World Food Programme is the humanitarian agency on the frontline fighting hunger worldwide. We offer assistance in 74 countries, using food to help shattered communities rebuild their lives and futures.
The World Food Day Action Countdown forms part of our call to the billion people who are active online, to help the one billion people who are hungry: A Billion for a Billion!
Earn 500 OCC points for every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can earn an additional 2,500 points for a Partner Activity. Just hold on to your links that prove you’ve taken part in these actions, and once we launch OCC officially next week, submit them as a “Make Your Own Action.” Good luck!
-Emily
The World Food Programme is calling on you to take action in the days counting down to World Food Day, October 16. Each day we will issue a daily challenge as part of our Billion for a Billion campaign.
Today’s action is to play FreeRice!
Action: Play the game and raise 1,000 grains of rice for a hungry person
FreeRice is an online quiz game that provides food to those who need it most, without you paying a thing.
Once you’ve raised 1,000 grains, take a screenshot and send it to your friends with a challenge for them to match your donation!
Already a FreeRice master? Hold a tournament! Challenge another club on campus, set up a fraternity or sorority challenge or have individual classes compete to see who can donate the most rice.
How does it work? You answer multiple choice questions about vocabulary, foreign languages, math, geography or art history.
For each correct answer you choose, 10 grains of rice — the staple food for half the world’s population — are donated to the World food Programme.
How do your answers translate into rice? Advertisers pay for banners at the bottom of each page correct answer. Every correct answer you give results in what would typically be called “advertising revenue”, which is donated to feed the world’s hungry.
We use those donations to provide rice as the ballast of a nutritious meal — for refugees, poor mothers and children, or hungry school kids — in the 70-plus countries where we work. The cash also enables us to buy the rice near the area of need. This helps to get the food there faster and keeps the cost of transporting food minimal. It also, very notably, assists the local rice farmers and economy.
1,000 grains of rice may not seem like a lot of rice, but it can add up to make a big impact. Free Rice has already raised enough rice to feed over 3.5 million people. It’s provided sustenance for victims of the devastating 2008 cyclone in Myanmar, for poor women and children in Cambodia, and meals for more than 100,000 schoolchildren in Uganda and Bhutan.
The World Food Programme is the humanitarian agency on the frontline fighting hunger worldwide. We offer assistance in 74 countries, using food to help shattered communities rebuild their lives and futures.
The World Food Day Action Countdown forms part of our call to the billion people who are active online, to help the one billion people who are hungry: A Billion for a Billion!
Earn 500 OCC points for every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can earn an additional 2,500 points for a Partner Activity. Just hold on to your links that prove you’ve taken part in these actions, and once we launch OCC officially next week, submit them as a “Make Your Own Action.” Good luck!
-Emily
The World Food Programme is calling on you to take action in the days counting down to World Food Day, October 16. Each day we will issue a daily challenge as part of our Billion for a Billion campaign.
Yesterday, we wrote about school meals and how they can transform lives…lives of kids such as Jonas, from Tanzania, whose story is below. Today’s action is for Jonas and the 66 million children around the world who go to school hungry.
Action: add a banner to your blog, website, or social network profile and raise awareness about Jonas, his dreams and the importance of school meals
Jonas Oltimbau, 15, hails from Masai country in northern Tanzania, where this year the rains failed and maize fields shriveled under the equatorial sun. Food became scarce, and many of the region’s schoolchildren went without — even at home.
“If you came here in those times, you would find the children fast asleep because they were so hungry and tired,” said George Lowassa, district school feeding coordinator. “Many of them have to walk up to 12 kilometers just to get here — on an empty stomach! Can you imagine?”
An empty belly makes it tough to concentrate on lessons. Malnutrition early in life can also affect a child’s mental development, weakening his or her capacity to break out of poverty later on.
Research shows that hunger is inherited. School meals help break the grip of that destructive inheritance, and give hope for the future.
In the words of Jonas, who dreams of becoming a lawyer: “I want to practice the laws of this country, and maintain peace and stability in Tanzania.”
The World Food Programme is the humanitarian agency on the frontline fighting hunger worldwide. We offer assistance in 74 countries, using food to help shattered communities rebuild their lives and futures.
The World Food Day Action Countdown forms part of our call to the billion people who are active online, to help the one billion people who are hungry: A Billion for a Billion!
Earn 500 OCC points for every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can earn an additional 2,500 points for a Partner Activity. Just hold on to your links that prove you’ve taken part in these actions, and once we launch OCC officially next week, submit them as a “Make Your Own Action.” Good luck! -Emily
The World Food Programme is calling on you to take action in the days counting down to World Food Day, October 16. Each day we will issue a daily challenge as part of our Billion for a Billion campaign.
Action: Share the facts
If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook or any other social network, you can share one of these facts:
- 66 million children go to school hungry, 23 million of them are in Africa.
- Enrollment rates and attendance go up when children receive food at school.
- Some 20 million children are born mentally impaired because their mothers did not consume enough iodine during pregnancy.
- Vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of child blindness, affects 140 million pre-school children worldwide.
The world’s poorest often do not have enough food at home, and most schools in developing countries lack the luxury of cafeterias or subsidized meals. The school meals we provide are a good way to channel the vital nourishment poor children need for mental and physical development. Having a full stomach also helps them to concentrate better on their lessons.
The benefits are best explained through the story of Fatuma, a 15 year old Somali girl who grew up in Dadaab refugee camp in North Kenya:
“We used to drink porridge in class, and it helped us. You find yourself hungry, and you are in class, and you have lessons to revise and do all that stuff, so it was a refreshment. In Dadaab you depend on that food.”
Watch the video:
The World Food Programme is the humanitarian agency on the frontline fighting hunger worldwide. We offer assistance in 74 countries, using food to help shattered communities rebuild their lives and futures.
The World Food Day Action Countdown forms part of our call to the billion people who are active online, to help the one billion people who are hungry: A Billion for a Billion!
Earn 500 OCC points for every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can earn an additional 2,500 points for a Partner Activity. Just hold on to your links that prove you’ve taken part in these actions, and once we launch OCC officially next week, submit them as a “Make Your Own Action.” Good luck! -Emily
The World Food Programme is calling on you to take action in the days counting down to World Food Day, October 16. Each day we will issue a daily challenge as part of our Billion for a Billion campaign.
Tropical Storm Ketsana has pounded the Philippines with the heaviest rains in 40 years – unleashing severe flooding and forcing a million people from their homes. With many areas of Manila under floodwaters as high as 20 feet, access to food and water poses huge challenges for some 30 000 families.
Today’s action is to help us spread the word about the emergency and the people in the Philippines.
This week in the Philippines, more than 2.5 million people were affected by flooding. And more storms are on their way, with a major typhoon predicted to hit on Saturday.
The disaster in the Philippines comes against the backdrop of the global financial and food crises, which delivered a devastating one-two punch to some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
It now only takes a flood, an earthquake or another season of punishing drought to provoke catastrophe.
The World Food Programme is always on the frontlines, rushing food and other emergency supplies during these crises. When the cataclysmic tsunami hit Asia in 2004, we mobilized help on the ground within 24 hours. Just as we have in the Philippines.
This rapid response is ever more crucial as the number of natural disasters has almost doubled since the 1990s.
Climate change acts as a crisis multiplier – bringing cycles of drought, flooding and severe weather more frequently and with increasing severity.
According to the UN environmental agency, more than 90 percent of the people exposed to natural disasters live in the developing world. These are the most vulnerable people, feeling the effects of climate change right now.
The World Food Programme is the humanitarian agency on the frontline fighting hunger worldwide. We offer assistance in 74 countries, using food to help shattered communities rebuild their lives and futures.
The World Food Day Action Countdown forms part of our call to the billion people who are active online, to help the one billion people who are hungry: A Billion for a Billion!
Earn 500 OCC points for every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can earn an additional 2,500 points for a Partner Activity. Just hold on to your links that prove you’ve taken part in these actions, and once we launch OCC officially next week, submit them as a “Make Your Own Action.” Good luck!
-Emily
The World Food Programme (WFP) is calling on you to take action in the days running up to World Food Day, October 16. Each day from October 1 – October 16, WFP will issue a daily challenge as part of WFP’s Billion for Billion campaign.
The World Food Programme is the United Nations’ frontline agency for hunger solutions, reaching an average of 100 million people in 80 countries each year. In emergencies, WFP gets food to where it is needed, saving the lives of victims of war, civil conflict and natural disasters. After the cause of an emergency has waned, WFP uses food to help communities rebuild their shattered lives. WFP has innovative programs working with farmers to purchase food locally; building infrastructure to make sure farmers can get food to market and working with farmers’ cooperatives to create access to credit necessary to grow and sell food for their communities.WFP also works with communities to mitigate the effects of climate change -supplying rations in exchange for activities that range from the planting of trees, to the building of microdams.
This year, the combined impact of the global food and financial crises has pushed the number of the world’s hungry past one billion for the first time. At the same time, there are more than a billion people – with access to the Internet – who can be part of the solution (if you’re reading this, you’re one of the online billion!)
You can help.
In the days leading up to World Food Day, we’re counting down with one easy online action a day that you can take to raise awareness about one billion hungry worldwide!
Action: Share this video and raise awareness
Copy and paste this link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jSBW0BOPqM – into your update status on Facebook, Tweet the link, send the link as part of an email, Digg the link or choose your favorite social network to share it.
To find out more about the hungry billion and for more ways to make a difference go to http://wfp.org/1billion.
Remember you can receive 2,500 points for participating in a partner activity!
We’ve all been reading the headlines, and watching the news about the financial crisis. These are truly hard times for people all around the world.
President Obama and his new economic team, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have a huge job ahead of them. They have been facing down a growing economic crisis and recession in the United States from day one.
But while we must work for economic justice at home, we must also not forget our brothers and sisters across the globe in this time of need. That’s why Jubilee USA has launched the What’s On Your Heart? Campaign. Over 6,000 people across the country have already sent handmade hearts and postcards to remind Timothy Geithner that as Americans we care about issues at home and also about our sisters and brothers around the world. The hearts will be delivered to Geithner personally by a delegation of religious leaders, including Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
There are two really simple ways to get your message to the new Treasury Secretary
DO IT YOURSELF: Make a heart telling the Treasury Secretary “what’s on your heart,” with your own message or click here for suggestions. Sign it with your name, address, phone number, and email address. Mail your heart to: Jubilee USA Network / 212 E. Capitol St. NE / Washington, DC 20003.
The deadline to take action is February 20th, 2009.
Amanda Beckham, a senior at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and recent attendee of the Power 100 summit had this to say about why she is involved:
The reason I decided to fill out a postcard, and to empower others to do the same, is because not only is it one of ONE’s issues, but it resonates with my personal humanitarian beliefs. I believe that in conjunction with clean water and substantial food, as well as proper education, there is no way these countries are going to develop and thrive economically and sustainably, if they have debt looming over their heads…These are the reasons I want to be a part of this movement, and I can’t just sit back and think that someone else will take care of it… writing a postcard is the absolute least I can do, but every little bit counts… I also hope others will feel this same altruistic obligation to help our brothers and sisters throughout the world.
We encourage you, your friends, and community members to join Amanda and thousands of other people in sending messages to Timothy Geithner, reminding him that he should do everything he can to address global and domestic poverty. Thanks you for all you do!
The OCC Blog is a daily log of the ONE Campus Challenge, a friendly competition to determine which university's student body has the most effective global poverty-fighting campaign. The site is operated by ONE staff, Campus Outreach Ambassadors (COAs), and Campus Leaders.
The content of each post represents the views of that post's author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: Bread for the World, NGO Partner, Uncategorized