An Issue of a Choice

Are you hungry ?

Do you know how many people feel hungry now?

Believe it or not,

more than 1,000,000,000 people worldwide are suffering from hunger

right here on this planet,

right now at this moment.

One percent of them

die

of hunger and malnutrition each year.

So how do we help them?

At a side event of the World Food Summit: five years later, in June 2002, the FAO Secretariat presented a draft outline for an Anti Hunger Programme, a strategic, cost-effective framework for national and international action to reduce hunger through agricultural and rural development and wider access to food.

According to this proposal, public investment of US$24 billion a year would be enough to jump-start an accelerated campaign against hunger that could reach the WFS goal. Taken in perspective, the price tag is startlingly low, dwarfed by the more than US$300 billion that the OECD nations transferred to support their own agriculture in 2001. As the economist Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out, in comparison to a global economy measured in the trillions, US$24 billion could be considered a “rounding error”, representing barely five cents for every US$100 of income.

And the payoff would be impressively high. FAO has estimated that achieving the WFS goal would yield at least US$120 billion per year in benefits as a result of longer, healthier and more productive lives for several hundred million people freed from hunger.

----- The State of Food Insecurity in the World (2002)

They just need 24 billion dollars each year .

Unfortunately, the total expenditure of World Food Programme

who provided food for 102.1 million people in 78 countries in 2008

was only US$3.72 billion in that year.

Do you think that 24 billion dollars is a huge amount of money?

I don’t think so.

If every country

gave

less than 0.05 percent of its GDP in 2008,

there would be 24 billion dollars.

If every government of countries

gave

less than 2 percent of its military expenditure in 2008,

If every company whose name was in Forbes Global 2000 list

gave

a bit more than 1 percent of its profits in 2008,

If every citizen of developed countries and territories

gave

less than 2 dollars of his or her income once a month in 2008,

But they didn’t,

or

most of them didn’t.

So this is not a technological issue.

This is not an economic issue.

This is even not a political issue,

but a moral issue.

Do you believe it?

Are you still sitting there and doing nothing for this?

If your conscience allows you to do so,

what do you think the difference is

between you and this man?

He killed more ?

I don’t think so.

People more than those who died in World War II

starved to death in the last decade .

People more than those who died in the Holocaust

starve to death each year .

People more than three times of those who died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

starve to death each month .

People more than eight times of those who died in 9.11

starve to death each day .

One person

who just wishes for some food

starves to death each three seconds .

Most of those starved people

are children

younger than five years old.

What made those children starved?

Natural disasters ?

Wars ?

The global food crisis ?

I don’t think so.

Our indifference killed the children.

This is an issue of a choice .

As a member of this cold society,

what do you choose to do?

To save

or to kill ?

You can donate money, food or whatever you can donate to World Food Programme.

Even if you don’t have the power or money ,

you can go to www.thehungersite.com and www.freerice.com to give free food.

You can go to www.wfp.org , www.fao.org , and www.ifad.org to learn more.

You can tell all those things you learned to your family, friends, strangers and whoever you can speak to…

Just believe it, there are many things you can do .

Just do something

from now on .

The dying children

can’t wait.

Presentation design by Xueyang Wang

Notes: Data sources

The number of hungry people: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/20872/icode

The number of people die from hunger and related causes:

http://www.fao.org/mdg/55978/en

The expenditure of WFP in 2008:

http://www.wfp.org/wfp-numbers

The world’s GDP: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/01/weodata/download.aspx

The Global military expenditure:

http://books.sipri.org/index_html?c_category_id=1

SIPRI military expenditure figures are based on information available in open sources, primarily supplied by governments. They represent a low estimate; the true level of military spending is certainly higher , due to omitted countries and items of spending. Nonetheless, SIPRI estimates capture the great majority of global military spending and accurately represent overall trends.

-----SIPRI YEARBOOK 2009

The total profits of Forbes Global 2000 (add all positive

numbers in “Profits”) :

http://www.forbes.com/2004/03/24/04f2000land.html

http://www.forbes.com/2005/03/30/05f2000land.html

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/18/06f2000_The- Forbes-2000_Prof.html http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/18/biz_07forbes2000_The-Global-2000_Prof.html http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/18/biz_2000global08_The-Global-2000_Prof.html http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/18/global-09_The-Global-2000_Prof.html

List of developed countries and territories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_income_economy

The number of people died in World War II:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

The number of people died in the Holocaust:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

The number of people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

The number of people died in 9.11:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

Notes: Images sources

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MEGA_MAC_Set-1.jpg

http://www.wfp.org/hunger/map

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UNHCR_DADAAB_REGION,_KENYA_AFRICA_DOD_2006.JPEG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GDP_PPP_per_capita_IMF.png

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:10JAN07_A55_BEFORE.JPG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Times_Square-27527.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_$2_obverse-high.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_11_Launch2.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Two_Dollar_Uncut_32-Subject_Currency_Sheet.jpg

Page 50: An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics and Participant Productions present)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolf_Hitler_in_Yugoslavia_crop2.JPG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Omaha_Normandy_Cemetery.JPG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Children_in_the_Holocaust_concentration_camp_liberated_by_Red_Army.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atomic_cloud_over_Hiroshima.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nagasakibomb.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starved_girl.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hurricane_Frances_from_the_ISS_-_10AM._EDT_AUG_27_2004.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Botswana_Defense_Force_Soldier_DD-SD-00-01033.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Farmer_in_Pakistan.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Un_c-130_food_delivery_rumbek_sudan.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starved_child.jpg

An Issue of a Choice

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