Why I chose to dedicate the rest of my life fighting hunger off the face of the Earth.
If you are reading, chances are that you have never experienced hunger on the scale that the one billion people of concern live with it everyday.
I have never experienced hunger either. But I have been in a few situations where I did not have access to one single meal and I thought that I was going to die. I certainly did not like the feeling and I could not focus on anything for that afternoon until I got to a nearest town and bought food (a long bicycle ride gone wrong).
A few days later, I asked myself how people could live like that on a daily basis.
I grew up on a continent where hunger is rampant. I have seen people on the streets begging for food and as a young child (I was probably 7 or 8), I remember seeing someone on the street who was being helped by a group of people to swallow food and water because from what I was told, he had not eaten in days and was to weak to even open his mouth.
I will never forget the man’s hazy gaze and I will never forget how his body was shaking and the convulsions he had.
Without food, no living organism will survive. It does not matter whether it’s a human being or a plant.
Without food, all of human crises can never be solved.
Without food, you can not expect anyone to pull himself or herself out of poverty by going to school, to start a small farm, to seek employment and in HIV AIDS patients to even benefit from the effects of the drugs that he or she may have been prescribed.
Food and water are two of the most vital elements that are crucial to survival and without them, death is a certainty.
What boggles my mind is that hunger is not a complex problem like climate change, wars and other issues facing humanity. Yes, they are very linked but hunger is one crisis that can quickly and easily be disposed of.
All it takes is really the world sitting up and collectively saying: “Enough”. If the world could have the same fever that it had when Obama was running for office or when the World Cup Football is on, I promise you that we would not hear of hunger within years.
Global hunger needs global awareness. People behind climate change have done a wonderful job of popularizing the notion that us humans are killing our dear planet and that we should put a stop to it as our lives literally depend on it.
Now no matter where you go, everyone is concerned about the environment whether they like it or not. Corporations get boycotted when they pollute, people get reprimanded when they do not recycle and political powers get voted on their climate policies. That’s the kind of vision I have for global hunger:
MAKING IT EVERYONE’S NUMBER ONE PROBLEM TO FOCUS ON
The day companies of all size include fighting worldwide hunger in their mission statements, the day politicians and other office candidates include hunger on their agendas and manifestos and the day it is expected from individuals to partake in hunger elimination or prevention activities, is the day that hunger will see its last day on Earth.
It’s as simple as that.
The World Food Programme, the world’s largest hunger relief and humanitarian agency, wrote: “If everyone online gave just $80, there would be no world hunger in 2010” (At the time of writing this message on Twitter, there were a billion people online).
$ 80 billion sounds like a huge amount of money from an individual’s viewpoint but if governments, businesses and individuals collectively decided to raise that amount yearly, it could be done.
Then, organisations helping people get out of poverty would teach them how to fend for themselves and forever be immune to the poverty plague.
My goal is to get the world to focus on hunger and make it their number one human crisis to eliminate. You cannot eliminate extreme poverty, AIDS, global warming if people are hungry. You cannot preach the gospel or a political ideology if the person you are brain bashing is running on empty. You cannot get people to stand up and fight for their human rights or tell their leaders that they want whatever change they seek if they don’t even know if they are going to have something to eat and the next meal time.
If the world that’s not hungry could focus on the world that’s hungry, it would be a first solution to dealing with most of the world’s problems.
For those people who do not like immigrants flooding into their country, if these people are not facing hunger and are able to prosper, you can rest assured that they will have no reason to live their countries.
For those people who do not understand why their countries has to keep sending their hard-earned money to other countries in the form of foreign aid, know that if these people are not fighting to survive from hunger, they will pick themselves up and become active in their economies.
For those people who wonder why some wars simply never end, you can be sure that if people are able to eat, they would be able to get an education, know their rights, exercise them and keep a close eye on corruption and stop situations from escalating into wars.
This is not a class in politics or global issues. It’s just common sense. Hunger can be a weapon. Think about it… what happens to your own thinking when you have skipped a couple of meals? What happens to your energy? What becomes your primary focus? Eating or figuring out what the next episode of your favourite TV show is going to be like?
If you want to make a big business decision happen, won’t you make sure that all the parties partaking in the negotiations have a full stomach first? Or, do you even think they will be paying any attention to your presentation?
Why do you think romantic dates happen over dinner? How do people generally feel when they have eaten? More uptight or more relaxed and open to your courtship initiatives?
If you are Christian and are well immersed into your Bible, you’ll even remember that in many instances Jesus fed the people before he even started preaching. Maybe, He was onto something?
If you want world peace, if you want the planet to stop being in peril, if you want to travel the world without fearing for your life, if you want a better tomorrow for your children or if you don’t know where to start in tackling the world’s most pressing issues, here’s the first step to achieving your ideals:
Help wipe out hunger from the face of this Earth and you will be on the fast way to building a perfect world.
That’s what I am dedicating my life to achieving while living my dreams too, two outcomes that are not mutually exclusive.
