Nancy E. Roman, Director of Public Policy, Communications and Private Partnerships Division at the World Food Programme (WFP) serves up this simple solution to tackling world hunger.
Deep in the places many of us go to find adventure—Tanzania, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro; Nepal, to trek the Himalayas; the Caribbean, to bask in the sun— there’s a hidden problem: Hunger.
Gnawing at nearly 1 billion people around the world, hunger is robbing huge swaths of the next generation’s potential. Without a base level of calories, children’s brains and bodies will never fully develop. They’re more prone to disease, they’re less likely to attend school, and if they do, hunger prevents them from learning. Climbing a mountain for fun isn’t even a pipe dream.
It’s a contrast that’s hard to process in our well-developed country: While 1 billion people are overweight, nearly another billion go to bed hungry each night. The breadth and depth of this problem can begin to overwhelm, but there is a simple solution. A piece that we can break off and chew: providing a cup of porridge for the 59 million children who attend school hungry every day.
School life in the world’s toughest places is pretty bare bones. Groups of children study under trees, often without pencils or paper. A warm cup of food can make all the difference in their education. First, it increases the odds that children will show up to school in the first place. Second, a full stomach allows them to concentrate better, especially after a long walk— sometimes many miles—to school. The kind of nutritional boost provided by the WFP’s Fill the Cup campaign has contributed to the success story of Nimdoma Sherpa. Nimdoma received school meals from WFP as a child in Nepal and last year joined the largest team of all-Nepali women to climb Mount Everest. She summited the 29,029-foot peak on May 24th. Like millions of others nourished in school, Nimdoma is now a healthy adult, taking on some of earth’s greatest challenges.
That simple school meal—full of nutrition and potential—is why we have launched Fill the Cup as a global campaign. The small, symbolic red cup is a powerful illustration of just how little it takes to solve world hunger. Filling that cup with porridge, beans, or rice costs just 25 cents a day. Feeding all of the world’s hungry school children, 59 million of them, would cost just $3 billion a year; a fraction compared to the trillions of dollars that governments are now spending to rescue the global financial system.
Solving hunger starts with one child, and one meal. With just a little help, millions of children can fulfill their greatest dreams. To make a donation to WFP’s Fill the Cup campaign, please go to www.wfp.org
