KC Concepcion, our national ambassador for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), rallies support from her friends in the media and her fellow artists and bloggers in the global fight against hunger.
Hunger has already become the number one health risk worldwide – greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Every night, 1 billion people go to bed with an empty stomach. Every day, hunger kills 26,000 people; 14,000 of them are children. What also do not make it to the headlines are the over 963 million chronically hungry people all over the world – more than half of them are in our region, the Asia and the Pacific. In developing countries like the Philippines, the number of chronically hungry has been increasing at a rate of almost four million per year since 1990s.
KC urges Filipinos to be aware of the gravity of these numbers, and be proactive at fighting hunger: “I would want hunger and malnutrition to hopefully be covered by our media friends at least once a week because it is an issue that is as important or even more so… but none is paying too much attention to it. That’s part of my job; to help WFP work to put the issue of hunger at the center.”
These numbers may appear to be the standard data presented to the public for general knowledge. We might not have a ready attitude to sympathize with its gravity. Most of us probably cross paths with this statistic only at the stoplight on our way to work. Thus, we acknowledge its presence but do not fully comprehend it in depth and in width. This hunger problem exists in intersections of well-lit cities; but more crucially, this hunger problem persists in the unreachable trails in the provinces where neither light nor food can find its way.
It persists such that one in nearly seven people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. For parents, this means one entire family living in starvation. For children, this means missing out on play time and on school time (what would generally constitute a happy childhood).
Hunger has already been reported to be among the key causes of absenteeism and school drop out. Thus, in 2003, the idea on a global walk against hunger was set on the table by WFP and its first corporate partner, TNT. It was inspired by the millions of poor children around the world who walk several kilometers to school every day – often hungry and barefoot – determined to get an education and improve their future. Unilever followed suit in 2003, and DSM Nutrtional Products in 2008.
On 7 June 2009 (Sunday), WFP, together with its major corporate partners TNT, Unilever, and DSM, will stage, End Hunger: Walk the World. The Walk is an annual global awareness and fundraising event occurring simultaneously in 24 time zones within 24 hours in 77 countries. In Manila, it will be held from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. from the Cultural Center of the Philippines to the Rizal Park to converge at the Rajah Sulayman Park.
According to WFP Country Director and Representative Stephen Anderson, “Our aim in the Philippines is to bring together at least 10,000 to join us in the walk, as well as to seek donations to school feeding in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao, sustaining daily meals for 71,000 children from grades 1 through 3 in 427 schools in North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat provinces.”
65% of our total population inch their way in life in poverty. Most of the depressed areas are found in Mindanao. KC herself was made witness to the urgent need of the Filipinos down south when she flew to South Cotabato recently for her first official task as a WFP Ambassador.
When asked whether she worries about the conflicts in the area, she shared the inspiration she gets from other U.N. Ambassadors, singling out Angelina Jolie, who has shown courage to realize her mission in Africa. To KC, these concerns fall secondary to her dedication to help WFP end hunger worldwide.
WFP will bring food to 100 million people in over 80 of the poorest countries. It begins in Auckland, New Zealand and finishes in Samoa. Some of the other participating countries are Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, India, Egypt, Czech Republic, United States of America, Brazil, Norway, United Arab Emirates, and Lisboa.
Walk the World started with only 40,000 TNT employees taking part with family and friends. The participants had ballooned to more than 250,000 people walking the world in 2008. More steps have been taken towards the fight against hunger. This year, WFP hopes to multiply these steps from all walks of life, all over the world.
There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life. What we need to achieve is to strengthen our will to persevere. As expressed by WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran, “This event has the potential to bring awareness that every day we lose 25,000 people to hunger… And we can win this battle.”
We can start by taking our step. Hundreds of thousands of people together will walk the world in just one single day. All we have to do is take this one step.
(The Media, Artists and Bloggers Unite Against Hunger is organized by m2.0 Communications , the Walk the World’s partner communication agency, in support of the efforts of UNWFP’s projects. The bloggers were convened by donavictorina.blogspot.com, the country’s leading advocacy blog. For more information and details, please log on to www.isanghakbang.com)
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