You need to take action… this is a big deal
Compassion is organizing a day of prayer and fasting for the global food crisis on June 25th. That’s Wednesday.
It breaks my heart to hear about the current global food crisis and how it affects children and their families. Rice, beans, corn and other food staples have become dramatically more costly in recent months, creating extreme hardship and suffering. This need cannot be overstated. For families earning just $2 per day or less, there is just no margin. The impact is truly devastating.
There’s a lot I don’t understand about the world. I don’t understand why I have everything I need and then some. I don’t understand why the world that had so little food before has even less now. I don’t understand why I have to run on the treadmill to burn off extra calories when the rest of the world is literally dying for those calories. Especially though, I don’t understand how we can sit back and do nothing. This thing is real. It affects real people with real families and real lives.
C’mon now - Take action: pray, then give.
WHAT IS THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS?
The World Food Programme calls the global food crisis a phenomenon, a “silent tsunami,” that is affecting families in every nation on every continent. Food prices for popular menu items like rice, wheat and beans have doubled in the last year. Though increases in food prices have hit all budgets, it’s the poor who bear the brunt of price inflation. The higher prices are forcing people who survive on just $1 a day to spend upwards of 80 percent of their budgets just on food. As a result, many people, including millions of children, are going hungry. The longer food prices rise, the more people will be plunged into hunger and poverty.
WHAT IS CAUSING THE CRISIS?
Since 2005, food prices have risen a whopping 80 percent because of…
• rising fuel costs
• rising food demand from populous nations like India and China
• natural disasters destroying crop yields all over the world, including the United States
• growth of biofuels
The global food crisis is forcing poor families to spend more of their household budgets on food, leaving little for anything else. In Bangladesh 95% of the 11,782 children Compassion serves there are affected. Many children are eating only at the church-based center (also known as a Compassion project). In Haiti, inflation rates have risen 40%, pushing up food prices. All 60,000 children served by Compassion in Haiti have been affected by the food crisis there.
Experts predict the combination of a weakening dollar, soaring oil prices, and reduction in food production will not dissipate. They are predicting this long-term crisis will tighten its grip on poor countries, causing more children and families to suffer.
