WHY is 10 percent of the world’s wealthiest nation at risk for hunger? And, WHY does that same population live with higher rates of obesity and diabetes? WHY are 923 million people across the world hungry? WHY do 12 million children in the US not have access to healthy meals each day? WHY do nearly 16,000 children die everyday from hunger-related causes (one child every five seconds) around the world?
These are the kinds of tough questions singer-songwriter Harry Chapin and Bill Ayres started asking after a meeting in September 1973. Chapin was a guest on Ayres’ radio show, “On this Rock.” Chapin enjoyed Ayres’ engaging interview so much that he invited him to his home for dinner. Months earlier, in preparation for hosting a talking heads program, Ayres had been researching poverty in emerging nations; among his findings were “horror films of children starving.” The singer and radio host got to talking about the drought in the Sahelian region of Africa, and decided to do a concert to raise awareness and funds. Due to poor organizing, however, their efforts would not fare as well as the recently successful George Harrison UNICEF affair.
But, like most dark clouds, this too had a silver lining. WhyHunger Executive Director and Co-Founder, Bill Ayres, tells Tonic, “At that point we recognized that events don’t solve problems, they can help, but the event psychosis doesn’t work. What you need to do is make a lifelong commitment. So I said to Harry: ‘I think that’s how we can do it. Are you willing to do that?’ And he said, ‘yeah.’ So we decided to spend the rest of our lives working on hunger and poverty.” And so became World Hunger Year.
A Deep-Rooted Issue
In celebration of their 35th anniversary, World Hunger Year officially changed its name to WhyHunger in early March. A befitting moniker and nod to their origins. In dealing with the world’s hunger crisis, the nonprofit has always asked questions because they believe the answers and solutions live at the grassroots level.
Since its inception, WhyHunger has maintained a belief in two important truths: The root cause of hunger is poverty and the root cause of poverty is powerlessness. They’ve also known that simply knowing what lies beneath this global dilemma, will not solve the problem. Its inherent complexities require the cooperation and partnership of countless parties and organizations. As WhyHunger applies band-aids to millions of food insecure people, it never loses site of the big picture — a vicious, perpetual cycle.
- In 2008, household food insecurity rose more than 35 percent due to the recession and increased unemployment.
- More than 49 million people — including 16.7 million children — experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in seven households in the US.
- 5.7 percent of US households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 17.3 million people, including 1.1 million children, live in these homes.
- In 2008 alone, a rise of about 6 percent in the price of groceries has led the poor to adopt a variety of survival strategies, from buying food that is beyond its expiration date to visiting food banks.
- About 25 million people in America receive food stamps. Most benefits are used up by the third week of the month, leaving many families to scramble for other sources of food.
- The USDA recently found that about 96 billion pounds of food available for human consumption in the United States were thrown away by retailers, restaurants and farmers over the course of one year. Fresh fruits and vegetables, fluid milk, grain products, and sweeteners accounted for two-thirds of these losses.
- Hungry adults miss more work and consume more health care than those who don’t go hungry.
- Kids who experience hunger are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, behavior problems and other illness.
- The total cost of hunger to American society is said to be about $90 billion a year.
- In contrast, it would cost about $10 billion to $12 billion a year to virtually end hunger in the US.
First, Stop the Bleeding
People think in terms of immediacy, explains Ayres, who speaks with the calm measure of someone in this fight for the long haul. “If somebody is hungry, let’s give them a sandwich, or some soup, or a bag of food. And that’s great; we’re in favor of that — that’s emergency food.” WhyHunger addresses immediate needs in many ways. One of their most significant efforts is the National Hunger Hotline. The hotline offers service six days a week and largely addresses immediate food insecurity issues by getting callers connected with local organization to meet their food needs, as well as connecting donors, volunteers and organizations with one another.
“The problem is, what we have, is not an emergency, it’s a crisis and it’s a long-term one. Not just now … but the crisis of hunger is always there in America and it’s certainly there all over the world. Big time. So you don’t solve it with emergency food. That may be absolutely necessary to save peoples lives at some point,” Ayres said. He goes on to recall Harry’s fondness for the Chinese proverb, “if you teach a person to fish, she will eat for a lifetime.”
As an a natural extension of providing relief, community organizations have expanded their services to help combat the causes of hunger and poverty, by giving people the tools and resources to become self-reliant — job training, education, access to health care and social services. In an ideal world, the problem itself would be treated holistically, thereby making the need for emergency food obsolete.
Long-lasting Solutions
WhyHunger believes fostering self-reliance is the key to moving beyond emergency care. The nonprofit has been extremely successful in building its Grassroots Action Network — mutually beneficial partnerships with 8500 community-based organizations across the nation. “We’ve been able to get a lot of these groups to move from being emergency food providers to going into the larger issue of community food and dealing with the quality of food and then also dealing with poverty,” explains Ayres, “So that they’re not just giving out the sandwiches, but they’re trying to get people connected with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), child nutrition programs, some have created job training programs, mentor programs, mentoring people to become self-reliant. I see thousands of positive signs around the country — and it really is a kind of movement.”
WhyHunger is also cultivating more progressive initiatives such as farming in urban communities. “Urban farming is a big deal now,” says Ayres. “Whole sections of formerly abandoned Detroit are now farms. We’re in the Mississippi Delta, working on what we call Food Deserts — areas where the only food is fast food and convenience stores. And, that’s true in the South Bronx, that’s also true in the Mississippi Delta. They’re growing crops down there but it’s soybeans and cotton, and you don’t eat that.” WhyHunger plans to build this model to eventually roll out to other states.
Ayres emits optimism when speaking about the Good Food movement, or the Community Food Security movement. These various groups are interested in the food that’s served in school meals, whether its creating more farm to school programs or getting local produce into schools, the awareness is growing. As evidenced by the crisis that is still alive and well, we’re going to need cooperation beyond NGOs and activists. Michelle Obama‘s war on childhood obesity with her Let’s Move program, and even the premiere of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, set to premiere on ABC Friday, March 26 (check out Oliver’s attempts to get America’s unhealthiest city on the road to good eating below), are encouraging signs that we’re moving in the right direction.
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Photos 1, 3, 4 courtesy of WhyHunger. Photo 2 by ccstbp via Flickr.