Fighting Hunger

Today I had to earn 500 grains of rice on free rice.com for part of school.  All I had to do was click on the answers to the multiplication fact and boom- 10 grains of rice in my bowl.  Then I went and got a snack. 

But so many people can't just get up from their comfy chair and get a banana or soup or whatever.  Did you know that every six seconds a child dies because of hunger and related causes?  That's a lot of kids.  But there are lots of ways to help. 

Visit WFP for lots of information and ways you can help.  Did you know 25 cents can fill one of their red cups- food for someone far away for a day?

http://www.wfp.org/

Now lets say that 20 of you readers go onto free rice and do 21 problems this week, that's 3 a day.  That's 4,200 grains of rice!  This is my favorite site for helping stop hunger... visit it today! 

Would you like to know where the rice goes?  Check this out-

Where does FreeRice rice go? WFP United Nations World Food Programme - Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Finally, here are some of the stats on hunger I copied from the WFP site~

GLOBAL HUNGER


1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat - more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union;

(Source: FAO news release, 19 June 2009)

The number of undernourished people in the world increased by 75 million in 2007 and 40 million in 2008, largely due to higher food prices;

(Source: FAO news release, 9 Dec 2008)

907 million people in developing countries alone are hungry;

(Source: The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2008)

Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people;

(Source: The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2008)

More than 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women;

(Source: The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2006)

65 percent of the world's hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

(Source: The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2008)

CHILD HUNGER



Every six seconds a child dies because of hunger and related causes;

(Source: State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2004)

More than 70 percent of the world's 146 million underweight children under age five years live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone;

(Source: Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition, UNICEF, 2006)

10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths;

(Source: The State of the World's Children, UNICEF, 2007)

The cost of undernutrition to national economic development is estimated at US$20-30 billion per annum;

(Source: Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition, UNICEF, 2006)

One out of four children - roughly 146 million - in developing countries are underweight;

(Source: The State of the World's Children, UNICEF, 2007)

Every year WFP feeds more than 20 million children in school feeding programmes in some 70 countries. In 2008, WFP fed a record 23 million children.

(Source: WFP School Feeding Unit)