world hunger

Upon a recent trip to the U.K., I made several observations, as follows:

A billboard advertising Stella Artois beer boasts that it contains "just four ingredients". This ad, tactfully plastered from Manchester to London to Oxford, displays a campaign toting the product's simplicity; this particular type of alcohol contains "hops, malted barley, maize and water". With each component being either edible or multifaceted, one must raise the question: does the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages do potential harm in the battle against world hunger?

Originally published on IgniteYourFaith.com.

"That's me," my little sister Jessica said between bites of a chocolate chip cookie. She pointed to a photo on the refrigerator.

My mom put down the gallon of milk she'd been pouring into Jessica's glass and glanced at the refrigerator. "The girl in the pink shirt?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"That's not you, honey. That's a picture that came in the mail."

Confused, my 8-year-old sister left her chair and walked up to the refrigerator. Looking more closely, she saw that the picture wasn't her at all. She furrowed her eyebrows, and I could almost see the thought running through her head: Who was that girl?

Fill up your water bottle and get ready for an awesome way to help provide kids in Africa with clean water. For the next couple of weeks, I challenge you to drink only water. No juice, no soda, no sports drinks, no (gasp!) coffee, no Jamba Juice—nothing but water for two weeks.

On April 27, 2008 Tyler Cowen of The new york times wrote about rising food prices and their effect on millions. I quote from the article 'Freer trade could fill the worlds rice bowl' "Rising food prices mean hunger for millions and also political unrest, as has already been seen in Haiti, Egypt and Ivory Coast." This alone shows how much despair is spreading throughout the world.

"Over 1 billion people live on $1 a day, the benchmark of absolute poverty." I found this to be a frightening statistic while I was reading the weekly Economist today.

Think about that: One billion people.

Why is our country so busy with the Iraq War, when their are so many people in Africa starving and dying of disease? We are so busy massacring the Iraqi people, and covering up our search for oil with the stupid WMD excuse, that we don't even notice that there are bigger fish to fry. We should be spending our time and money on disease research and feeding the poor.

I like living in the twenty-first century; however, I cannot deny the fact that it has its imperfections, world hunger being a major one. According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die every day from starvation or hunger-related causes. That means another person dies every three and a half seconds from these causes.

Within the play "My Name is Rachel Corrie," the true story of a young woman who died in defending what she believed in, I find particular inspiration from Rachel's words as she describes in the form of her 10 year old self why she believes she was made to live. It's a beautiful dream that I feel everyone in the world can in some way relate to, I hope you enjoy it.