Tag Archives: hunger

Games legacy, global campaign against hunger starts

Posted on by
Reply

British Prime Minister David Cameron with Michel Temer, Vice-President of Brazil, Football legend Pele (left) and Olympic double gold medallist Mo Farah (right) at the Olympic hunger summit in Downing Street, 12 August 2012. Photo: Foreign & Commonwealth Office (some rights reserved).

A more serious tone is emerging post-Games, with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Brazilian Vice-President Michael Temer taking the opportunity to put the spotlight on helping millions of children suffering from malnutrition in the the world’s poorest countries.

Olympic double gold medallist Mo Farah, Olympic great Haile Gebrselassie and football legend Pele, who have all campaigned to end the cycle of hunger and poverty by tackling their root causes, joined the leaders, along with others including non-governmental organisations and private sector, at Number 10 Downing Street last Sunday – the closing day of the Games – to highlight a push to tackle global hunger ahead of the next Olympics to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Long term exposure to a poor and inadequate diet and repeated infections have left 170 million children in the world suffering from stunting – a condition which stops children from fulfilling  their potential because their bodies do not grow and develop properly. The United Nation’s World Health Assembly recently agreed a new global target of a 40 percent reduction in the number of stunted children by 2025.

The ‘hunger summit’ has been inspired by a declaration by the G8 at its last summit in the US in May, where President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new alliance on food security with African leaders and the private sector as part of an effort to lift 50 million people out of poverty over the next decade. Alongside three initiatives announced by the UK at the London summit. other initiatives are underway by India, the EU, the World Food Programme and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation to make an impact on global levels of undernutrition, according to Downing Street. The UK will take up G8 chairmanship from next year.

An article in The Guardian newspaper says that the initiative has received ‘cautious welcome’. Campaigners argue that while control rests with the larger companies, it takes away the power of small farmers to feed their people.

The article quotes the Gates’ Foundation head of agriculture, Sam Dryden, who attended the summit, acknowledging the pressure of large corporations – as well as agricultural subsidies in the West – in squeezing out smallholder farmers in Africa.

“Agriculture is a local experience, eating is a local experience,” he is quoted as saying. “It is important that African countries develop their own systems and that smallholder farmers grow the crops they want to grow.”

 

 

Six Second Project calls on worldwide meat industry to end child starvation

Posted on by
Reply

An ambitious new charitable project encouraging the worldwide meat industry to spearhead a new initiative aimed at ending child starvation and hunger was launched at the recent World Meat Congress in Paris last week, endorsed by the International Meat Secretariat.

The Six-Second Project is a global non-profit organisation, based in the US, deriving its name from the appalling statistic that a child dies every six seconds from hunger or hunger-related causes. The Project aims to raise widespread awareness of that fact, to be achieved through a unified fundraising and awareness campaign led by the global meat industry. Another goal is to foster innovative and sustainable solutions to the hunger pandemic, especially in areas where the six-second statistic is the unacceptable reality, the organisation says.

The worldwide meat industry and its partners are being challenged to join the Project by participating in a unified cause ’cause marketing’ campaign to raise funds for defeating hunger.  The ambitious idea is that project partners will create special products and/or promotions and commit to donating a generous portion of sales to the Six-Second Project. Funds raised will then be used to provide grants that foster innovative and sustainable solutions to the global hunger pandemic.

“It is our hope that, by raising awareness of this global issue, the general public will also be inspired to make a difference, not only through their purchases of products from participating partners, but also through volunteering, donating and recruiting their neighbours and friends to become involved in this noble cause,” say the organisers.

In the unprecedented move – this is believed to be the first time a global industry has been challenged to confront such a crisis – the Six-Second Project is targeting the meat sector’s food production and distribution experts as it believes they have “never been better suited to accept such a challenge”.

The meat industry is not without its critics, its organisers note. “The industry is being challenged to address its environmental impact, and the sustainability of its future production. Likewise, the Six-Second Project challenges the meat industry to harness its size, strength, knowledge and diversity to become the leader in this fight. Through a unified effort to fight hunger, the industry can effect positive change by giving back to the communities that need it most.”

At the project’s launch at the World Meat Congress, chief executive of the US Meat Export Meat Federation, is reported to have said: “This is an opportunity to make meat the brand that is fighting global hunger.”