Poverty and Hunger: The basics and beginning

Hi, Bonjour and Hola!

You’ve probably all seen those commercials about worldwide hunger (you know, the ones that make you cringe like the Animal shelter commercials).  Well, I thought that some background info about poverty and hunger would help everyone understand the actual gravity of the situation. So here is a little experiment for you to try to illustrate the actual food distribution in the world.  If the corn capitalists were North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, here is how the population would break down:

1.       Africa-14%

2.       Asia-60%

3.       North America- 5%

4.       Europe-9%

5.       Latin America-12%

So, with 100 chips (one can of Pringles), here is what the food distribution would look like:

1.       Africa-2%

2.       Asia-27%

3.       North America-32%

4.       Europe-31%

5.       Latin America-8%

Do we see some MAJOR discrepancies?! I do… but just to show you another little piece of info, if you were to have 100 pennies to show the world wealth and where the money is (our recession does not seem that bad after this list), here is how it would turn out:

1.       Africa- 3%

2.       Asia- 37%

3.       North America- 24%

4.       Europe- 27%

5.       Latin America- 3%

Sure, you may “well our continent isn’t first”, but we only have 5 percent of the people but almost a quarter of the wealth and a third of the food. Africa really got beaten up on this one, they have a high population (three times North America), but only 2 percent of the food. If any of you watch soccer (it’s okay if you don’t), but the striker for my favorite team (Didier Drogba) opened a hospital in his home nation of the Ivory Coast. He raised 3 million pounds for a hospital to treat and house children and orphans with diseases like malaria and malnutrition. He has also raised large sums of money to donate to charities in one of the poorest and least fed countries in the world (still the Ivory Coast).

These are just some things to think about and things that I will be touching on in my later posts. At the end of this post are some of my favorite sites for background information on this issue.

-Catherine Korizno

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