University Million Meal Week 2009amrow on April 24th, 2009
Volunteers will package a million meals!
Thousands of volunteers from area universities and colleges will join forces in late August to break the record they set last year by packaging 1 million meals for Stop Hunger Now, a Raleigh-based international hunger relief organization that coordinates the distribution of food and other life-saving aid around the world.
Last year, volunteers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, East Carolina University, Duke University, North Carolina Central University, Peace College, Meredith College and Saint Augustine’s College packaged a record-breaking 1,010,374 meals in one day.
This year, “University Million Meal Week” will be hosted by three North Carolina universities. Each site will have its own packaging event where students and community volunteers will work side by side to package meals. Packaging events are scheduled at NCSU and ECU on August 22 and at UNC-CH on August 29.
“The resounding success of last year’s University Million Meal Event made us believe we could do it again. The scale of this event draws much needed attention to the war against hunger and provides lifesaving meals to the world’s most destitute,” said Ray Buchanan, president and founder of Stop Hunger Now.
Stop Hunger Now’s highly nutritious meals include rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a vitamin-fortified flavoring mix with 21 essential vitamins and minerals. Each meal provides a reasonable serving for six and costs 25 cents to make. Stop Hunger Now provides the ingredients with funds from sponsors and contributors.
“Our goal is to raise $250,000 to cover the cost of food and packaging materials for this huge event,” said Rod Brooks, CEO of Stop Hunger Now. “We are actively seeking support.”’
SOURCE : ” http://www.stophungernow.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5689&news_iv_ctrl=0 “
World’s hungry exceed 1 billion, U.N. tells Financial Timesamrow on April 24th, 2009
The global economic crisis has contributed to pushing the number of hungry people in the world above 1 billion for the first time, the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper.
The credit crunch is exacerbating the impact of soaring food price inflation in 2007 and 2008, which had already boosted the ranks of the chronically hungry from less than 850 million before the food crisis to 963 million by the end of last year. FAO director Jacques Diouf told the FT on Thursday that number had increased, and “unfortunately, we are already quoting a number of 1 billion people on average for this year”.
SOURCE ” http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/20316/2009/02/27-170057-1.htm“
Hunger Eclipsed At G-20 Summitamrow on April 24th, 2009
So where are we in the fight against global hunger now that the London G-20 summit is over? Pretty much where we were the day before it started, says Nancy Roman.
A billion people go to bed hungry every night. Last year we saw how quickly hunger spurred food riots and social unrest in more than 30 countries. While it has been and will be hard for hunger to make a big cut in a competition among global economic strife, climate change, and other international issues, it is hard to accept that yesterday, the bottom billion didn’t make the cut at all.
I’m choosing to view the G-20 communique as lost opportunity for the hungry rather than a travesty. Unsurprisingly, the leaders spent their much anticipated 8-and-a-quarter pages defining and articulating one more time the big economic problems and then building a plan aimed at “strengthening the financial system.”
SOURCE: “http://www.wfp.org/stories/hunger-eclipsed-at-g20-summit“
UN Seeks Assurances G-20 Will Help Poor Nationsadmin on April 7th, 2009
Top U.N. officials welcomed Thursday’s pledge by the Group of 20 nations to provide $1.1 trillion in new lending, but said the lack of specifics made it difficult to tell how much help will be going to the world’s have-nots.
It was unclear, for example, what will happen even if the nations triple as promised the money available to the International Monetary Fund, which makes emergency loans to struggling countries, bringing it up to $750 billion.
“Nobody can of course calculate who’s going to benefit exactly which way from different measures,” said Ad Melkert, acting head of the U.N. Development Program, in an Associated Press interview.
