“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.”

~ Edward Sandford Martin

Thanksgiving is upon us… marking the beginning of another holiday season. The holidays are a great opportunity for sharing love and being with friends and family… It is a time of happiness and reflection. Memories and tradition…

So here we are this year, on the brink of holiday frenzy and abundance… please remember there are those who have little to nothing to be thankful for… there are those who simply are… So now I ask all my friends and family to simply Be… Remember charity and lend a helping hand to your neighbor… simply ask and listen for we are all in need of something…

I have been a supporter of the WFP for the past couple of years… I believe in their mission… I encourage all to think about a charity, one which matters to their soul, and join their community as a supporter… Take the first step…

One Weeks Food Around The World

This photographic journey around the world was a feature in Time magazine… the first reaction I had was wonder next shame… thinking upon the waste…

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy

This Thanksgiving Day, let’s remember what we truly have to be thankful for. Let’s take a good, hard look around us and realize that while we may not have everything we want, what we want is not always what we need…

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

~ Cicero

Thank you all and have a happy thanksgiving…

Lots of Love

Enreal

Thank you for helping us build the Wall Against Hunger. You can view your card here:http://wall.wfp.org/node/4266
and see it on the wall here: http://wall.wfp.org/wall?guid=4266.

Please share your card with your friends and family. Let them know that they too can create a card.

If you have a blog or a site, you can also help get the word out by adding some cool wall banners available here: http://wall.wfp.org/banners.

Thank you for your gift to WFP and for helping in the fight against hunger.

-World Food Programme

Powerful Islamist insurgents in Somalia tell the UN World Food Programme to stop importing food and buy local produce…. From BBC News. Full story

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Yesterday I wrote about continued conflict between Hizbul Islam and al Shabab in parts of southern Somalia, and had a good discussion with commenter Toaf about where things might be headed. Today I want to discuss how conflict affects local communities.

First, fighting drives people from their homes and fundamentally destabilizes communities. Al Shabab’s recent conquest of Afmadow sent thousands of people fleeing, including key elders and businesspersons. This further erodes local political and economic systems. Moreover, when refugees flood into new areas – or other countries – that places pressure on societies and leaders there.

And for people who remain in a town hit by fighting, problems accumulate. Beledweyne, near the Ethiopian border, frequently changes hands between Hizbul Islam, the Transitional Federal Government, and Ethiopian forces. Repeated shifts in rule have driven many residents into camps outside the city, halted much economic activity, and exacerbated problems of malnutrition and disease.

Second, the fighting makes it impossible for many aid agencies to continue working. I am continually surprised to hear that any are still working, and I admire the bravery of the men and women who have remained in Somalia to provide humanitarian assistance despite pervasive violence. Now, however, even some of the bravest are being forced out:

The regional spokesman for the United Nations’ World Food Program, Peter Smerdon, tells VOA that the agency was forced to withdraw five local staff members from the town of Afmadow in Lower Jubba on Saturday.

Smerdon says the move follows the evacuation of six WFP international workers from the town of Buale in Middle Jubba nine days ago.  Christian humanitarian organization, World Vision, also flew out six members of its staff in Buale on the same day.

“In Afmadow, it was clashes between Islamist groups.  In Buale, it was because of security concerns, which I cannot go into,” he said.

WFP and World Vision are two of only a handful of international aid agencies operating in Somalia’s southern regions.  The United Nations says the evacuation of WFP staff is yet another blow to a country, where a third of its population, more than three-and-a-half million people, need urgent food aid.

World Vision plans to continue some of its programs in the Juba region, but obviously violence is creating massive difficulties.

Finally, the politics of international aid to Somalia also have effects on the ground. Earlier this month, the UN and the WHO warned of looming disaster in Somalia: floods, disease, and hunger could affect millions without an increase in aid, and even the funds available could hardly be disbursed due to violence. US concerns that money might flow to al Shabab led to restrictions on aid delivery that “have put aid groups operating in the area in a near-impossible bind.” Some money is still coming in – the African Development Bank recently pledged $2 million for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government – but the TFG serves a fraction of the population.

In short, suffering is real and widespread, and those of us who follow the political and strategic aspects of the civil war would do well to keep the human aspects in mind.

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As a coda, the crisis in Somalia has occasioned some reflection among bloggers about the American role in the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Adam Serwer writes that US support for the invasion was a mistake, and I agree. So does the Majlis Blog, though not as explicitly. The Majlis Blog also wonders what the US can do now, a question few are bold enough to answer with specifics (including me).

I believe we must not overestimate our capacity to “fix” Somalia. In the interest of crafting a more coherent policy, however, we do need to have more serious national conversations about a number of questions, including: Should we recognize Somaliland? How should we treat Puntland? Do our policies toward Kenya seem likely to help Kenya deal with fallout from Somalia’s civil war? What will we do if Ethiopia contemplates another major intervention in Somalia? Can we prevent regional actors from arming factions inside Somalia? And can we quarantine southern Somalia if the TFG falls?

And lest we forget, here’s a reminder of some history:

US Soldier in Somalia, 1992

The YES7 mid-year meeting was held in Waterloo during the weekend of November 20-22. At the conclusion of the weekend, the IRIS staff showed this slideshow.

It contains photos of the 60 Nigerian and Tanzanian students getting adjusted to their lives in the Midwest during the first four months of the 10-month Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES).

The first part of the slideshow contains photos from when the students first arrived in the U.S., with their American host families, siblings and friends, at school and homecoming and getting involved in sports.

The second part of the slideshow contains photos of the students attending the Global Youth Institute, volunteering, trying new things and just having fun!

Slideshow created by Christelle Enega and Jessica Crawford.

You remember the Banana Republics? The original being Honduras?

Well, now there are Cereal Republics…

From Food First:

Ethiopia’s recent history is punctuated by famine. Severe droughts, on-going conflicts and stagnating agricultural growth have been reproducing widespread food insecurities for decades. Compounded by cereal prices doubling over the last year, many people are struggling to meet even their most basic food needs. Concurrently the World Food Programme has had to reduce emergency food rations due to the high global food prices. Right now, at least 6.2 million people in Ethiopia are seriously threatened by hunger and malnutrition, and require urgent food assistance.

At the same time Esaya Kebede, Director of the Ethiopian Agricultural Investment Agency, revealed that the Ethiopian government has so far designated a total of 3 million hectares of agricultural land, an area around the size of Belgium, to be leased to incoming foreign investors. For a country on the constant brink of famine, this is a perplexing move. What is behind such massive land giveaways?

The land deals are part of a wider global trend, dubbed by many as neo-colonial land grabs. Shocked by the price spikes and distribution bottlenecks during the global food price crisis, wealthy food-importing countries from the Middle-East, India and China are scrambling to buy up enormous tracts of arable land on the African continent in order to long-distance farm for their own domestic markets. Similar to the Central American banana republics of the early twentieth century, foreign agri-businesses are working in close collaboration with their own governments to establish enormous agricultural plantations in African countries. Exploitative labor conditions, peasant land dispossessions and environmentally destructive industrial farming methods spring to mind. The only difference is that the target crops now are not cash crops like bananas, rubber or cocoa, but basic food staples, such as wheat, maize, barley and rice. Are we facing the emergence of neo-colonial ‘cereal republics’ throughout the developing world?

Read the article in full here

You know its bound to fail, but embracing the web and social networking in the manner WFP has needs to be recognised, celebrated and supported as best one can.

As reported in UN Dispatch, the World Food Program launched a new campaign, a billion for a billion. The idea is to link the 1 billion internet users around the world with the 1 billion who are chronically hungry.

WFP offers a plethora of ways through which you can raise awareness of the campaign and through it, the challenge of meeting the needs of those who are hungry around the world. WFP uses an array of social networking tools, and more traditional multimedia techniques in its campaign. At first, it almost looks like an overkill, but there’s something here for everyone interested in financially supporting WFP’s endeavour, or creating awareness on it through Facebook and Twitter.

Heck, there’s even an international short form film competition in collaboration with YouTube.

Though very rarely found in massive projects such as this, some form of independent after action review would be useful in ascertaining what technologies and methods worked the best, and what failed. In both cases, learning why can be immensely helpful in the design and implementation of similar initiatives in the future.

The World Food Program is the world’s largest humanitarian agency whose mission is to combat hunger worldwide.

Currently, there are 1 billion people who go to bed hungry every night, which is approximately one sixth of the world’s population.  Of the total number of  people who are hungry in the world, over half are in Asia and the Pacific with a quarter in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Recently the existing economic crisis has made it more difficult to extend assistance to these areas.  As a result:

-Some governments have been less willing to fund food assistance
-Families in poor countries receive less money from relatives working abroad
-Poor families pull children out of school and buy less nutritious food

Fortunately, the WFP has established 5 strategic objectives to get the job done!

1.    Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies
2.    Prevent acute hunger and invest in disaster preparedness and mitigation measures
3.    Restore and rebuild lives and livelihoods in post-conflict, post-disaster or transition situations
4.    Reduce chronic hunger and undernourishment
5.    Strengthen the capacities of countries to reduce hunger, including through hand-over strategies and local purchase

But we need everyone to join in and be a part of the help!

• Become a WFP Fan on Facebook. Go to WFP Facebook Page
• Tweet hunger facts to friends
• Put up a picture on “the wall against hunger”
• make a video about hunger- Join the Hunger Bytes competition and much more..

Learn more about WFP’s A Billion for a Billion digital campaign and become one of the billion online users to help solve world hunger.



Un sitio de lo más internacional y mediático, una agencia de las Naciones Unidas: wfp.org
Los datos que muestra son terribles y, como si fuera poco, tiene un contador que va mostrando cuántos niños murieron de hambre desde que entraste al sitio que es escalofriante.
Después de sobrellevar el shock de todos los recursos movilizadores que utilizan, paso al contenido…

La opción principal es donar dinero. Ojo, no lo juzgo, para muchos es la opción más fácil (no demanda mucho tiempo), y por supuesto es necesario para llevar a cabo cualquier tipo de acción.
También tiene muchas formas de ayudar promocionando el sitio y sus acciones. En esta época en la que internet y las redes sociales tienen tanto impacto en la forma de comunicarse, ellos están utilizando todos los recursos posibles.

¿Qué hacen? Les paso el link en español.

Es uno de esos lugares ideales para aportar un granito de arena, especialmente para los que no dormimos tan bien a la noche porque en algún lugar del mundo hay un niño pasando hambre…
Lo interesante sería, sin dejar de dar una mano a estos megagrupos, no olvidar a las pequeñas agrupaciones locales que intentan ayudar y tienen mucho menos reconocimiento y apoyo. Cada uno de nosotros encontrará la combinación de ayuda económica + promoción + brindar tiempo, que mejor le siente.

The United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) said today that for the first time in history, the number of hungry people worldwide will exceed one billion.
The huge amount of people facing food insecurity has prompted the UN organization to appeal to individuals for the first time. The WFP launched the Billion for a Billion online campaign today, in an effort to get one billion people living in the developed world to give one euro (US$1.50) a week to the campaign.

WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran commented that donor governments have supported WFP efforts in the past, but they cannot be expected to do so anymore because of the financial pressure they are facing in the worldwide economic downturn. She said that the WFP was projected to make only $3.7 billion in donations, about half of the $6.7 billion it had targeted for 2009.
“We now have hunger galloping ahead – over a billion people now for the first time in history – and because of the financial pressure on governments we think it’s really important now to call on the citizens of the world to help solve this problem directly,” Sheeran told the Reuters news agency in an interview.
Sheeran noted the rise in the number of hungry people was partially due to increasing prices in the developing world following a food crisis in 2007-08. The WFP’s resources are stretched due to many crises worldwide, such as violence in Pakistan, drought in eastern Africa, and flooding in Southeast Asia. The organisation can thus provide only limited assistance to those in need.
“The problem at the moment is that WFP probably has ten or twelve acute emergencies on its hands, each one complex, each one with its own compelling situation [...] We are cutting rations,” Sheeran told Reuters.
Sheeran made the online campaign announcement ahead of the World Food Summit beginning on Monday in Rome, Italy, where world leaders will meet to find solutions to the growing number of hungry people in the world. The summit is to be hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Huge amount of people facing food insecurity prompts UN organization to appeal to individuals for first time… From VOA. Full story

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The man who continues to lead by example

In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, TNT and Ace Xpress were chosen by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) as the local partners for distributing supplies to those parts of the country which urgently needed assistance. TNT, in turn, needed to choose man to lead the fleet of vehicles, a ‘point-man’ who would help facilitate this important assignment. They needed someone reliable, respected and resourceful. They chose Asanka Sanjeeva.

“Being selected was a great honour”, says Asanka, “and I was determined not to disappoint those who had shown great faith in me.”

Since joining TNT in 1989, Asanka has never shied away from responsibility and has always impressed people with his wholehearted commitment to each task. He was the ideal candidate for such a position and his selection was soon justified. The WFP was so pleased with the efficiency of the distribution process and they continue to use TNT to this day. Accessing areas considered ‘unsuitable’ for the general public, Asanka currently manages a team of 25 drivers for the WFP. When entering precarious parts of the country, particularly in the east and north, Asanka identifies teamwork as being essential.

“I have a lot of faith in the people I work with,” the former rugby player from Kingswood College explains.  “In places like Killinochchi, each day is a new challenge and we have to be on the ball every moment. We are only as strong as our weakest link so the team looks out for each other.”

Back in 1989, Asanka was one of the first employees at the TNT Express centre in Kandy. Ever diligent, he has contributed immensely to the growth of the business in this region, expanding the network to include Nuwara Eliya. In addition to his role within TNT, he overlooks the AIX supply chain services. “Asanka has the ability to make the correct decisions under pressure,” says Jerome Brohier, Director, Ace International Express. “He is an exceptionally consistent performer, very thorough in his preparations and always thinking out of the box.” Asanka’s sporting instincts have certainly prepared him well in his current profession. He is the embodiment of a great team leader, never asking someone to complete a task he himself would not relish. TNT is in good hands.

2007 – Ace Magazine Issue 4

In exclusive interview with VOA, Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu says farmers’ associations involved in project are starting to profit from sale of their produce… From VOA. Full story

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