What I’ve Learned In Revolution Hunger
By Sophie Solomon
Revolution Hunger has provided me with a ton of knowledge and resources to start my hunger fighter journey. I hope that in years to come as I go off to college and beyond I can take the knowledge that I gained from my experience and raise awareness about hunger and help to fight hunger.
Hunger, Health And Wealth
I remember when a small bag of potato chips used to be 25 cents. Somehow the suggested retail price rose up to 50 cent for small ounce of potato chips.
Junk food is not the only thing that increased, but along with that was the gas prices — which has been a big deal recently.
Some people blame the economy, some blame our leadership, our government and some blame it on consumers. Overall, we all play a role in the hunger disparities and it’s starting right in your community.
You may ask, “How could I be responsible for the thousand of people going hungry every day?” Well, you are not directly responsible for those people.
Let’s look at the big picture.
In 2009, in response to the question, “Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”
18.5 % of people in the U.S. said “Yes.” Nearly 1 in 4 households with children said, “Yes.”
What does this mean to you? This means hunger lurks in almost every community in America.
But, hunger is bigger than America. It’s an global issue and we all can do something
25,000 people die everyday from hunger-related causes.
Take Forgotten Harvest for example, a local food bank in my hometown of Detroit. This organization “rescued” 23.2 million pounds of food last year.
They “rescue” food that grocery stores. schools, restaurants and various businesses would otherwise throw away and donate them to over 435 food donating organizations.
Forgotten Harvest is combating two hunger problems in America: Hunger and waste. That is amazing!
Think of what we can do by rescuing our food. Next time you’re at an event with a surplus of food, why not tell the organizer about Forgotten Harvest or an organization that does something similar.
Using your voice and knowledge of hunger, waste, and malnutrition counts. I always say, if you cannot afford to donate money to food banks, donate your time! Your knowledge and your physical presence in your community will make an impact.
Just think if we all worked together to combat hunger disparities in every community….that would create a global impact!
You don’t like cost of eating healthy? Then I push you to contact legislators and community leaders and do something about it.
But, there are ways to get around that hefty price. Always check your newspaper for coupons, look for fliers advertising sales, and support locally-owned stores, who are more prone to give you a price cut because you live in the neighborhood. You can always choose to volunteer at a food bank!
It hurts me to realize that some parents in America have to choose between paying a house note or buying food for their children, but this is reality! Even when the parents can afford to buy food, there is a lack of knowledge on what the buy and how to be economical. Unfortunately, some families opt to buy the cheaper, calorie and carbohydrate-infested foods. As a result of constantly eating these cheap-but-unhealthy foods and snacks, this increases the high blood pressure, stroke, obesity and diabetes rates in our country. That means more trips to your doctor for prescriptions and more money these families have to come out of to keep themselves “healthy.”
What is the true definition of eating healthy or being healthy? It’s like we as Americans have two choices: buy the cheap-but-unhealthy foods and make more trips to the doctor for medicine or buy the expensive-but-healthy foods and not be able to pay some bills.
The malnutrition in this country is atrocious. But let’s not give up hope. There are lots of other organization out there combating hunger, waste and malnutrition in America everyday.
Here is a list of hunger relief organizations that also strive to keep Americans healthy at the same time. http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Issues_and_Causes/Poverty/Hunger/Organizations/Relief_Organizations/
DC Recap
Hello all Hunger Fighters! What a year it has been! We are coming to the end of our pilot year and I think a decent recap of my favorites is only appropriate :). Let’s see, we started off our August of 2011 with an awesome RH meeting in Washington DC. We got to meet each other and brainstorm ideas about how to Revolution Hunger can bring our message to YOU!
New media Producers decided up on videos, pictures, and LOTS of blog posts. One of my favorite blog posts was “To Be OR Not“ . I wrote this post with the Trayvon Martin case in mind; everyone focused in on such a terrible tragedy but tragedies happen all the time in our face. It’s not until something extreme happens in our own backyards that we tend not to take certain things for granted. I wanted to appeal to all in the sense that let’s not take forever for something bad to happen, before we take action against it.
Now, all the new media producers at Rev Hunger have done an supercalifragilistic job with making videos. We done everything from interviews on the street to hawking kids down in our school hallway with a camera. It was alotta work. Trust me on this one. I have to bring up the very first Rev Hunger video, by Jessie in San Francisco. She made it out to be like a news show which was really cool! It was witty and was loaded with info about Rev Hunger and what was poppin (/-__-)/.
Then, there was the “Dc Students Think Hunger Is…” video. I had hella fun with this video. I interviewed so many tens, teachers, administrators it was RI-DIC-U-LOUS. I had a class discussion about hunger and what it meant to the kids in my school. I got different feedback from everyone and on some topics the decision was unanimous.
Alexcia from the Twin Cities made “Ideas and Words” within like a month of her joining us! It was a total silent video and was pretty cool because the teens wrote on a board what they wanted and it was just so inspirational.
Well, Rev Hunger def did more than just that but I don’t think there’s enough GB space on Tumblr to tell every detail of our journey. But I can say, Rev Hunger has broaden my views about famine and hunger. I have been thoroughly educated about the effects of over farming and nutritional value. Hunger is not just located in Africa but EVERYWHERE.
As the saying goes, Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Tekiah Jones is the Washington DC New Media Producer for the Revolution Hunger Campaign. Tekiah is a a senior at McKinley Technology High School is planning to study film production and broadcast at Howard University.
Fighting Hunger Through New Media
We asked Revolution Hunger’s Jessie Chen to reflect about the greatest hits of her months as a New Media Producer with Revolution Hunger. Here’s what she had to say:
Fighting Hunger with Memes
My favorite blog posts that I have done have been images. I have noticed that they receive much more recognition from viewers, while at the same time they are very quick to make. Also, in particular, I really enjoy my Gandhi posts.
Jessie Chen is the San Francisco New Media Producer for the Revolution Hunger Campaign. Jessie prides herself in working with great organizations such as buildOn, Youth Steering Committee, and the ACLU.
Hunger Fighter Interview: Megan Emme
New Media Producer Jessie Chen interviewed Revolution Hunger’s own Megan Emme about here incredible work fighting hunger. Check it out—this is what RevHunger is all about!
RevHunger Interviews the Junior League of St. Paul
Revolution Hunger’s Alexcia interviewed Beth Schatz, of the Junior League of St. Paul. They talked about how teens can fight hunger, where to find inspiration, and much more. Check it out on the Star-Tribune website.
Listen to what Megan Emme has to say about hunger in her community and how she is tackling the issue first hand and attracting youth around her to do the same!
good:
Should Fighting Hunger Be a Franchise Business?
The idea of a business franchise is more likely to conjure an image of a Happy Meal than a famine food ration, but what if the same system that makes McDonald’s globally omnipresent could do the same for food aid or poverty-fighting?
Twelve-year-old Lauretta was forced to drop out of school to watch her younger brother while her mother forages for food to feed the family. Lauretta wants to become a school teacher. “I miss school very much,” she said. “I want to go and learn so I can help my mom in the future more.”
Read more about how the escalating food crisis in Niger is impacting children like Lauretta.
Really thought-provoking! How can we solve problems like this one, Hunger Fighters?
Life In Niger
Voices from the field and the burden of being poor, hungry and marginalized in a village in Niger. Click on the image to watch the video.
Another reason why we need hunger fighters and a revolution to end the injustice of hunger, poverty and preventable deaths when we live in an era of plenty! Join us and sign up at RevolutionHunger.org
Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.
