World Hunger is a Global Concern: Alum speaker to address issue on campus

Elizabeth Grden, Class of 2012
March 1, 2012
Filed under Quill

What if you walked into the Pryz tomorrow and there was no food? So you walk to CVS, or Yes!, or even Pizza Kingdom for dinner. Food is available all around us, because food is necessary to live a healthy and productive life. Food is important. A right to food is a human right.

Yet across the globe—and even in our own backyard – there are an estimated 925 million people who are chronically without food. Another two billion are intermittently hungry based on their level of poverty. Seventeen million of those people are children. Nearly 49 million Americans are at least intermittently hungry. Food prices are on the rise, pushing millions more into poverty and food insecurity each year. There are 22 countries that have a malnourishment prevalence rate of more than 35 percent.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has said that food security will be met when “all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food.” Are you food secure? If you are reading this, probably.

But with just under half of the world’s population living in a time of food insecurity, how can we not act? The situation is deteriorating and the world’s population is expanding. We need short-term solutions and long term development.

There are small things you can do right now, today and every day. Don’t throw out that fruit just because it has a small bruise, and don’t get rid of that lettuce because it is just slightly wilted. Be conscientious of your food waste– estimates place food waste at more than 20% in the United States alone. Be conscious of the food you waste and the water you use. It’s smart from an environmental perspective, too.

Talk to your congressmen. Ask them to support international food aid, which provides food assistance for millions in times of emergencies and feeds hundreds of thousands of children each year. Ask them to support poverty-focused foreign aid, because poverty and hunger are so strongly interconnected. One cannot be eradicated while the other still exists.

Today, Jennifer Holst will be speaking at 11:10 in Hannan 105 on these issues. Please consider coming to hear this alumna speak about her time working for Catholic Relief Services on public health and food security in Africa.