The wisdom of a child

Take just 6 minutes and listen to the profound wisdom of this child.

How Do You Quantify Starvation?

I read an article Friday that $6.00 will feed a child a sustaining diet for 1 month.  That diet consists mostly of rice, not the bleached white tasteless side dish we get in a local restaurant, but the kind of rice that people eat all over the world as their dietary staple.  This $6.00 diet may also contain some beans and small amounts of meat or fish depending on where that child is in the world, and how difficult it is to actually get the food into her bowl.  

It’s hard to put that into a context and I was thinking about it on Saturday as I ordered a Whopper, fries, and coke at Burger King and there it was, the context I was looking for.   My one meal was equal to a month’s supply of life-sustaining food for one staving child, and here is the irony, I wasn’t even that hungry!

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)needed to quantify starvation.  (The whole idea of that makes me shudder).  They define a starving child as any person with an upper arm circumference of 12 or less centimeters. (I guess the United Nations thinks if your upper arm is 13 centimeters you haven’t suffered enough.)  Anyway, I wondered how big that is so I cut out a piece of paper and made it into a circle to see just how thin you would have to be to have the distinguished title of, Starving to Death.  I cut out the strip of paper and carefully made a circle.  I was appalled at how small that little circle was.  It’s funny as I was doing it, I had an almost unconscious sense that the accuracy of my measurement would affect the life of a child somewhere.  Of course it didn’t, but I felt the gravity of this particular measurement and what it represented.  When I had finished, the little circle fit snuggle over my first two fingers.  It was about half the size of my watch.  To be considered a starving person (by UN standards) the child’s upper arm has to be half the size of my wrist?  Not half the size of my arm, but half the size of my wrist!  I just sat there looking at the tiny little circle and thinking about what it represents.

I dare you!  Make your own Starvation Gauge and remember that 1 billion people fall into this category.  If you don’t have the time to make the gauge for yourself I found a convenient reference for you.  The little band of paper fit very neatly around the outside of a US $1.00 coin.  How ironic.  That one coin could pay for a sustaining diet for 1 starving person for 5 days.  One dollar buys 5 more days of hope, of life, of opportunity to change, to grow, to learn, to love.  Six dollars will provide a sustaining diet for a month.  If you are thinking right now, what is the use? An extra month will just be a continuation of their unbearable suffering, then please consider that it might be the extra time needed to get to the end of  a drought or to regain strength after an injury or it may sustain them until long-term relief arrives in their village.  This kind of thinking is too abstract, so I personalized it and asked myself,  if it was my life or yours, would those 5 days or 30 days matter?  If you were starving, and someone offered you food, even for one day, yes, it would matter! 

Okay, so did you make your own starvation gauge? I keep mine next to my desk as a reminder that every minute people perish for want of something I just take for granted. 

Hopefully, this exercise has encouraged you to do something!  If not, at least I have given you some food for thought, no pun intended.  My hope is that you have been encouraged to acknowledge the problem, and to realize that each starving person has a name and a potential far beyond just surviving one more day.  

There are numerous organizations whose goal is to bring food to starving people.  I have listed links to three in the link’s section of this blog.  I’m sure you may know of other worthwhile organizations who also bring hope to starving people.  Please send me links to their websites and tell me about your experiences.  This blog is intended to be a dialog not a diary.

In regards to rice as a viable source of nutrition, you can read about making rice flood resistant, so it will have a greater impact on eradicating hunger, in the CNN article found at this website. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/01/29/waterproof.rice/index.html

The worst thing we can do is to Do Nothing.

We can make a difference! Together we will.

This blog is intended to literally show you how the other half of the world lives, and to help you connect to the various organizations around the world that are working to bring clean water, food, education, health care, and hope to the most desperate people in the world.

We are all one people on the earth and you can make a difference in the life of at least one suffering person.  As this site grows we hope to show you and tell you, how peoples lives are being transformed.  This site is not intended to solicit money or to be a clearing house for funds.  It is intended to be a compass to help you find existing programs that will resonate in your spirit and help you bring hope to the far corners of the earth.

We hope that the content and links will stimulate discussion and lead to action.  As the blog grows we will design guidelines for conducting home parties. The purpose of the home party is to stimulate dialog and raise awareness.  This blog will have the data and graphics needed to start a discussion within a small group and to encourage a conversation about subjects such as human trafficing.

Imagine a group of 6 or 8 middle class, middle age, people gathering for an evening of dinner and discussion.  Rather than talking all night about their latest doctor visits or what’s going on with the kids, or at the office;  image an informed lively discussion about what is really going on in the lives of people in the Sudan, Congo, Bangladesh, or India, with ways they have already helped or could help in the future.   What if the discussion wasn’t depressing but hopeful?  It could be, because we can make a difference.

Perhaps over time we can redirect our focus from ourselves to others and in the process find ourselves.