Sharing food links communities worldwide.
15 October is Blog Action Day, with bloggers worldwide celebrating the ‘power of we’. We’re pleased to join them:
What links economists in Zambia, landless families in Afghanistan and small-scale farmers in Sri Lanka?
It’s the desire to tackle hunger and to claim one of our most fundamental human rights, the right to food.
Find out more about CAFOD’s work round the world >
We live in a world where millions go hungry, but there is enough food for all. We have never been more interconnected. We have never been more divided.
So what stops the well-fed and the hungry becoming ‘them’ and ‘us’? What can transform all of us into ‘we’?
As a campaigner at Catholic international development agency CAFOD, I get a glimpse of innovative ideas to tackle hunger springing up among the organisations we support. And I get to see how these efforts are boosted by campaigning and fundraising by groups in England and Wales.
From this I believe that the power of we is harnessed by the things we share: a common need, a common faith and a common hunger for change.
As Martin Luther King famously said, “Before you finish eating breakfast this morning you’ve depended on more than half the world.” Whether in the smallest village or the biggest city, we are all part of the global food system.
But it is the poorest people who have the least power in the system, who sell cheap and buy dear, who get squeezed by middlemen, who bear the risks in corporate contracts. This infographic shows some of the imbalances in our current broken system>
The need for food is something we all hold in common, meaning that we all bear responsibility to act. Campaigning allows each of us to take action to bring about change.
“The problems we face in Kenya are the same as the problems in the UK,” explains Anton Mbandi from CAFOD partner Caritas Kitui. “The difference is the magnitude. We are bound together in our problems and successes. We are one world.”
What does it mean for us to have a common faith when CAFOD doesn’t just work with Catholics, nor are we supported just by Catholics?
I think it’s being true to a conviction that runs deep at the heart of what we do. To put it in religious language, it is that we are all created in the image of God. To put it another way, it is that every person matters. It’s simple and it’s radical and it unites us all.
It inspires us to change the world as it is, not just complain about it, and to come up with a vision of how it could be different. A shared hunger for change. That’s why, even though we know things won’t change overnight, we’re campaigning for a fairer food system. We have to start somewhere.
Act now for a fairer food system >
Want to know more about how communities in Zambia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and worldwide are tackling hunger? Then follow our series of blogs showcasing bright ideas to tackle hunger. The first is right here >
About the author: Sarah Hagger-Holt is CAFOD’s campaigns writer. Follow CAFOD on twitter >
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“We have never been more interconnected. We have never been more divided.” This is so true and so sad. I still am completely flabbergasted that with all of the things we are capable of we still have 25,000 people dying everyday from hunger. That, to me, is simply unacceptable.
Kimberly
Chief Seed Sower
Light of Mine
Seeds of Hope
http://www.lightofminetees.com