Food is a human right, but there are more hungry people now than at any time in history. The causes of hunger aren’t natural, they’re manmade - and we can fix them.
1 in 6 people do not have enough to eat. That’s more people than the US, Canada and the EU combined. Not only that, hunger kills 3.5 million children every year, or one every 10 seconds. Women are particularly at risk – the UN estimates that 60% of the 1 billion people currently suffering from hunger are women and girls.
Child sponsorship and hunger
Anjani (pictured right) is from Charbhariya's Musahar community. Her parents own a small plot of unproductive waterlogged land. The Musahar community are one of India's most impoverished and marginalised groups.
Most Musahar people reside in rural districts of Nepal and India's states where they are the victims of ingrained local prejudice and administrative indifference. Literacy levels in the community are as low as 2 percent and child malnutrition is common. ActionAid is helping Dalit (or ‘untouchable’) communities like Anjani’s to tackle the root causes of their conditions by lobbying for their rights and helping to provide education.
When you sponsor a child, you'll be providing the resources for real, long-term change. You'll get two letters a year from the child you sponsor, and updates from the country programme to tell you how the money you are spending is changing the community your child lives in.
Hunger
Eliza Namuru and her sister in-law Cristina harvest rice in the village of Mlaviwa in Malawi. Partly due to the rising food prizes around the globe, the agricultural sector in the developing world, after years of neglect, is receiving more and more attention.
We campaign to address the causes of hunger around the world, as well as providing relief to those who need it in times of emergency. By tackling the causes of hunger, we can affect long-term, sustainable change and work towards ending poverty.
What are we doing about it?
A huge amount of food is being burnt as biofuels. This is pushing up global food prices making it harder for the world’s poorest people to survive. Biofuel companies are grabbing agricultural land from small-scale farmers all over the developing world stopping them from growing food.
ActionAid is tackling the driving force behind the biofuels rush – government targets aimed at increasing the amount of biofuel used in transport.
Our international campaign is active in over 35 countries, calling for long-term change, and supporting farmers in their fight for a HungerFREE world. Poor people spend 60–80% of their income on food and were devastated when the price of staples like rice and wheat skyrocketed in 2008. The financial crisis means less money is being channeled to farmers from remittances, and employment is harder to come by.
- Support our international HungerFREE campaign
There has been a long term lack of support for small farmers, especially women, and a lack of investment in sustainable agriculture over the last 20 years. Women produce 80% of the world’s food but often do not have the right to own land, leaving them vulnerable to hunger.
In over thirty countries, ActionAid works with small-scale farmers, especially women, to access the practical support they need.
- Give an ActionAid gift and provide tools to support farmers
Climate change is already harming food production – crop yields in some African countries could be reduced by as much as 50% by 2020 as a result of climate change.
We are promoting sustainable, low-impact farming as the key way to tackling hunger.
- Sponsor a child and help prepare communities for the impact of climate change.
We campaign to address the causes of hunger around the world, as well as providing relief to those who need it in times of emergency. By tackling the causes of hunger, we can affect long-term, sustainable change and work towards ending poverty.
