Solutions for World Hunger Part II

In Part I of Solutions for World Hunger, I suggested some ways to stay informed including a list of movies to watch and books to read.  For Part II, I’m focusing on sustainable giving and various ways to take action including becoming a laptop advocate.  Again, keep in mind this is not an all-inclusive list and I welcome your ideas as well.

Got time?  Some spare cash?  Nonperishable foods?  Old Computer Storage Equipment?

You can make a difference if you can donate one or all of those things.

Use Old Computer Equipment to Feed Hungry Kids

Michael Becce, spokesperson for KOM Networks, wrote to tell me about a program KOM Networks has implemented to help you recycle old computer storage systems and raise money to feed hungry kids.  Becce, who seems to have an open concern for and desire to help hungry children, expressed the importance of the Junk-A-Juke Program.

KOM Networks, the world leading provider of storage management solutions for secure archiving has launched the Junk-A-Juke Program. The company is accepting older computer storage systems that they will recycle to raise money to help feed hungry kids. The Junk-A-Juke program will keep old computer storage systems that are difficult to dispose of out of landfills (80% still end up there). KOM Networks will not only pick up the equipment, but replace it with a brand new Dell Powered archive solution for FREE.  The older equipment is broken down and sold off as components or raw materials.  KOM’s goal is to collect and recycle enough hardware to feed one million hungry children.  KOM Networks will also accept PCs, servers, and various forms of other hardware as well.  For details, click on the Feed the Children button on KOM’s site.

If you’ve been following along with the original 21 posts (Souljourn for World Hunger), you will see that I support long-term sustainable solutions to world hunger.  These include organizations that help people gain food independence as opposed to simply receiving food aid.  Naturally, I support food aid during times of crisis, disasters and war or during any interim period to solve the urgent need while working on a sustainable solution.  Feed the Children does a lot for a lot of children.  They supply Vitameal (a nondairy, vegetarian meal loaded with essential ingredients specially formulate for malnourished children), they help abandoned babies, they provide clean drinking water, medication, medical supplies, books and help local health clinics.  Any hesitation I may have about Feed the Children revolves around what I consider to be a lack of sustainability regarding supplying food as opposed to helping communities grow food.  Feed the Children has a Donate a Goat program that they have called a sustainable solution to feeding children.  I disagree with this statement and with the general idea that donating a goat is an effective solution to feeding children.  The amount of water, food and resources the goat needs, in my opinion, can be better served to feed the children and not the goats.

From my perspective, the most sustainable measures to feed each person on this earth revolve around a plant-based lifestyle. This is the truly sustainable way to feed the world.  I believe that helping communities move away from organizational dependence and toward food independence is essential for long-term solutions.  If you missed posts, 11, 12 and 13, you will learn more about two organizations, Plenty International and World Neighbors, that are dedicated to growing food legumes for food independence.

But back to Feed the Children and KOM’s program:  Overall I believe that recycling is a good thing and recycling to help others, especially children, is a better thing.

Sustainable Giving

Let’s say you want to give a special friend a special gift, something unique, worldly and compassionate.  Here are some sustainable suggestions by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, author of Joy of Vegan Baking and The Vegan Table. Patrick-Goudreau has over 100 informative and engaging podcasts – Vegetarian Food for Thought – that can help you better understand a vegan lifestyle and how your choices can impact your health and the greater good.  Check out her podcast episodes Don’t Buy a Cow (December 20, 2006) or The Compassionate Gift Guide (December 8, 2009).

There you will learn more about sustainable giving through programs dedicated to providing solutions that help eliminate poverty and world hunger. These include:

• Trees for Life

• Fruit Tree Planting Foundation

• Women’s Bean Project

• Sustainable Harvest International

• Plenty International

Become a Citizen Lobbyist or a Laptop Advocate!

Be a part of the change in creating a food system that works for all.  The following quick clicks can result in long-term sustainable solutions.

• You can rescue local and organic farming in the new food safety bill

In the next few weeks, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a sweeping overhaul of federal food safety law — S. 510. The House food safety bill passed last year (HR 2749) included several measures that threaten small-scale organic producers, including a registration fee of $500 and blanket application of complicated monitoring and traceability standards–regardless of one’s farm size. Where large-scale industrial agriculture operations clearly warrant more federal food safety oversight and strict enforcement action, what appears to be happening is a “one-size-fits-all” approach that poses unfair costs and onerous reporting on local and organic farmers.  Support small-scale farmers by clicking this link, fill in your information and a fax will be sent to your Senator.

• Get Genetically Modified (GM) Food out of the Global Food Security Act

Tell Congress: No GM (genetically modified) Crops! Organic Food Security Now!

Despite overwhelming evidence that GM crops have failed to deliver on industry promises to feed the world and reduce pesticide use, a new multi-billion dollar aid bill directs taxpayer dollars (do you really want your money going toward this?!) towards more GM research. As written, the Senate bill is a stealth giveaway to seed corporations like Monsanto under the fraudulent guise of feeding the world’s poor.  Act Now! Tell your Senator to oppose the Global Food Security Act until the pro-Monsanto GM clause is removed!

• Check out the site Healthy School Lunches and Ask Congress for Healthier School Meals on April 21! Call to ask your representative in Washington to support H.R. 4870, the Healthy School Meals Act of 2010.
  

Care2 Petitions

• Start a petition of your own!  Petition your schools to include local produce, petition restaurants to donate their food waste, petition local farmers to demand organic food.  Petition local politicians to stop the destructive seeds of agrochemical companies.  Petition hospitals to change their cafeteria selections (I am eternally shocked at the selection of foods at hospitals).  Petition, petition, petition!  Once your petition is up and running, add it in the comments section of this post so the rest of us can check it out too.

• Canvas restaurants to give away their food instead of disposing it, or sign the Care2 petition to encourage restaurants to donate not dump their excess food.

• Make Worldwide Hunger a Priority petition.

Donate Non-Perishables – Estherleon Schwartz Steps Up to the Plate

I had the pleasure of interviewing Estherleon Schwartz, a cantor and spiritual leader in Southern California.  Estherleon Schwartz is taking on world hunger because she believes it is the socially, morally responsible thing to do.  She uses her creative arts to help facilitate change.

The reason Estherleon is advocating for the poor and hungry is very dear to her heart, because she knows what it’s like to be hungry.  As a holocaust survivor, she remembers in her early years how her father used to leave their hiding place and would come back with a piece of bread for the family to share.

I was born in the streets of Southern France, because as Jews we weren’t allowed in the hospital.  I was born in the alley with the assistance of nuns from a church.  I was hidden in the church for the first years of my life.  When I was four, we were running to the Swiss border.  When we got to the border, the Nazis were standing there ready to kill us.  My father hoisted me up over a fence and looked up at the heavens and said, ‘Save my daughter and she will always serve you’.  From what I remember, I was thrown over the fence and saved by the Swiss.  It was almost as if the Nazis were blinded at that moment.  A split second later, my father tried to climb over and he got shot.  He made it over. I had never seen such fear in his eyes.  He was such a calm man…like Gandhi but with the fervor of Martin Luther King.

Going forward, we rode the Queen Mary coming to the United States with thousands of refugees.  There on the shores of New York, I saw a beautiful statue pointing her light at me saying, ‘you’re safe here in America.’ That moment is imprinted on my heart.

Estherleon continued on with how she and her family, not knowing the language, felt like outcasts in America in 1948.  She ran away from home at eighteen, got married, had children and was divorced three years later.  She wrote a book Tears of Stone and my deal with God and donates a portion of the proceeds to help eradicate hunger  – to help assure no one in this world goes to bed hungry.

Q:  How did you arrive at the place of working with local food banks and advocating for food boxes in front of businesses?

One day, I think it was at Whole Foods, I saw this box, and written on it was ‘LA Regional Food Bank’ and you know how sometimes you don’t know why, but you know it’s the right thing to do?  I got in contact with the people and started walking the street with the boxes.  That became my outreach.  I went to businesses, places like banks and Starbucks and asked them for their help.  And then, because I’m on the Board of Directors for the United Nations Association (Pacific-Los Angeles, California Chapter), that became another avenue for my outreach.  I made a video.  I put on concerts Voices of Hope, Children Helping Children, all over wherever I’m invited to raise consciousness to volunteer to support people on becoming part of a food bank in their community.  As many concerts as I can do, as much as I can be out there, I have that voice.  And for each of us, by collaborating with your community, that’s how you can help make the world whole again to assure people have food and shelter.

Estherleon puts on charity events through her concerts to raise consciousness.  She puts on a lively concert and duet.  These concerts are an eclectic array of music from classical, to medieval to pop, and they include poetry, a video and at the end a candle lighting ceremony at which point she blesses each person individually.  Participants can come up, light a candle and sign up to be a part of the movement to help end world hunger in their community and beyond.

Now, through my concerts and through my One-minute Daily Devotional and just by being out there, I am hoping to enlist – all across America – people, volunteers, to be a part of Step Up to the Plate.  This video is about people getting involved.  It’s very simple, they contact their local businesses to place a drop box and then contact their local food bank to deliver and pick up the box.  We’re not asking for money, we’re just asking for everybody to be a voice.  A voice for every hungry child, every hungry family.

Volunteers can contact any store and ask to put a box in front of that store.  It can be done in so many creative ways.  I’m asking people to use their creativity, their imaginations, how they can fill up those boxes and have them picked up and filled up again all year long.  This isn’t a one-time event, it’s an on-going awareness.

My goal is when I’m laid to sleep is to know that everybody is fed and there’s no such thing as hunger – for the United States and the World.  We can all use our hands, our feet, our voices and our intentions to make change.

I signed up for Estherleon’s daily devotional – mostly just to hear her soothing voice. Her voice calms me.  You can learn more about Estherleon and sign up for her one-minute daily devotional by checking out her site.

Find your local food bank using Google or contact Second Harvest Food Bank (looks like they are now called Feeding America) to see if they can direct you.  And if you really want to be an superhero advocate, encourage Feeding America to only work with organizations that can guarantee nonGMO foods to those in need.

Check out Estherleon’s Step up to the Plate video, see the charity events she has planned or simply check out her site.

Here are two quotes to ponder as I complete Part III of Solutions for World Hunger.

The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
~ Gaylord Nelson, former governor of Wisconsin, co-founder of Earth Day

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

To support the organizations I write about in the series, purchase a World Hunger: Be the Solution Tee.  Proceeds from the shirt will go to the Small Planet Institute Fund and the International Fund for Africa.  All tees are sweat free and available in organic cotton.  To see the selection of World Hunger tees at Conducive’s Humanitarian & Human Rights Tee store, click here

To follow this series from the beginning, you can click the links below:

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 1

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 2

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 3

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 4

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 5

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 6

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 7

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 8

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 9

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 10

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 11

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 12

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 13

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 14

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 15

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 16

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 17

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 18

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 19

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 20

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 21

Solutions for World Hunger Part I

Solutions for World Hunger: Part III