By Jessie Chen
Some of us are introduced to food at a young age as mere objects our parents chucked into large moving metal crates as they strolled across the local supermarket. Here we witnessed shelves of eggs, baskets of fruits, mountains of different types of chips and sodas. It is then that we began to believe that food was endless and that the there must have been tons of other kids just like you and I who stood in the snack aisle picking which flavor of candy to choose from.
What we weren’t taught however, is that food is not endless and that there aren’t always other kids that have the opportunity to stand at the snack aisle who choose Sour Patch over Twizzlers. It is a commonly forgotten, commonly pushed aside fact that millions of children suffer from hunger everyday. Believe it or not, according to statistics found on various websites (including http://feedingamerica.org) in the US alone, at least 12 million children are at risk of going hungry.
12 million— Imagine that, that’s almost like banding 12 thousand large high schools full of children, all who are at risk of going hungry.
12 million— a size 15 times larger than the population of San Francisco.
Let us not forget the millions of starving children in this nation, however, there are millions more around the world who are in need of sustenance. A sustenance that could be provided with the touch of a pen. A sustenance that could be provided with the pick of a phone call.
So let us rethink the next time we are at the grocery store, or at the food court in the shopping mall. The access to cereals and juices you see stocked onto the massive shelves may not be so accessible to the kid next door.
This type of problem is the exact type of problem Revolution Hunger focuses on— ending world hunger. Through campaigning and active participation in community organizations such as Revolution Hunger, one day all children will have food to eat.
