Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:7
Communicating information on hunger and challenging people to alter their lives and give sacrificially or to even give at all is often not one of the most fun communication projects. But caring for the poor is very important to our Lord.
In addition, it has to break our hearts that one in five children is hungry in our land of abundance.
We can't do everything to solve all hunger problems, but we can do something. One of the most important things we can do is to tell the truth and to constantly keep the reality of hunger before our people.
We need true facts to create communications to teach our people
These three sources provide statistics and information on hunger that can help you prepare teaching, PowerPoints or fact-sheets.
Three great resources sites follow
Feeding America
http://feedingamerica.org/press-room/press-releases/fa-children-at-risk-of-hunger.aspx
This site has a Press Release archive with statistics and press releases you can use. Below is one of most recent and serious.
From the Global Policy Forum
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/217/46138.html
12 Myths about Hunger
An excellent article that does a great job of showing why these myths are false. It can be reused for research and educational purposes and is an excellent resource for teaching a class on hunger.
Myth 1: Not Enough Food to Go Around
Myth 2: Nature is to Blame for Famine
Myth 3: Too Many People
Myth 4: The Environment vs. More Food?
Myth 5: The Green Revolution is the Answer
Myth 6: We Need Large Farms
Myth 7: The Free Market Can End Hunger
Myth 8: Free Trade is the Answer
Myth 9: Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights
Myth 10: More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry
Myth 11: We Benefit From Their Poverty
Myth 12: Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?
From the Food For All Website
http://www.foodforall.org/hungerstats.html
Below is one of their lists of very useful facts that you can use on teaching and communicating about hunger. This is an interesting site that does a lot of work with grocery stores and other places like that for manufacturing agreements and special events that raise money for hunger. Might be good to check it out for ideas.
Hunger Statistics
Data gathered from the USDA's "Food Security in the United States", 2008 Study
- In 2008, 49.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, which includes 16.7 million children
- Overall, households with children had nearly twice the rate of food insecurity (21%) as those without children (11.3%)
- 5.7% of households (6.7 million households) experienced very low food security, an increase from 4.1% in 2007
- In 2008, 8.1% of households with seniors (2.3 million households) were food insecure
- In 2008, 4.1 % of all U.S. households (4.8 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times
- Groups with rates of food insecurity much higher than the national average (14.6 %) were:
- Households with incomes below the official poverty line—$21,834 for a family of four in 2008—(42.2 %)
- Households with children, headed by a single woman (37.2%)
- Black households (25.7 %)
- *Hispanic households (26.9 %)
- Food insecurity rate was highest in the South (15.9%), intermediate in the West(14.5%) and Midwest (14%), and lowest in the Northeast (12.8%)
- According to the US Census Bureau in 2008, 39.8 million people (13.2% of the US population) were in poverty
More coming, send me your samples
I'm going to continue to provide resources and, when possible, samples. The Micah 6:8 Section is where the updates will be. Please send me samples of anything that you create to communicate to your church about hunger and other poverty and compassion issues. Send original files and PDFs with permission for ECC to use them to: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com
Please share your thoughts, comments, questions!