Help for the Hungry

By ALCIONE GONZALEZ

Food is energy, food is strength, food is essential for healthy growth and development.

But one out of four children – roughly 146 million children — in developing countries is underweight.  And 10.9 million children under the age of five die in developing countries each year. Sixty percent of those deaths are related to malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. Often malnutrition begins even before a children is born —  to a malnourished mother.

GAIN, Two Degrees, Care.org and USAID are just some organizations working to help the world’s hungry.

GAIN knows the importance of your A’s, I ‘s and Z’s- vitamin A, iron, iodine and zinc- by providing women and children with vital vitamin rich nutritional packets. They target the most important period in a young child’s life by providing the packets the first 1,000 days after they are born.  Give to GAIN.

Two Degrees An eye for an eye, but not in the vindictive sense. Two Degrees promises that for every nutritional bar purchased from their shop, they’ll donate nutrition packs to a hungry child. According to the World Health Organization, the nutrition packets have a 95% percent success rate once they’ve reached a child. The packets are used to treat chronic and severely malnourished children. It doesn’t hurt that the bars for sale are nutritious and tasty, packed with nuts, seeds and whole grains. Flavors include chocolate-peanut, cherry-almond, and apple-pecan. It tastes good to help a hungry child.

CARE is getting to the root of the problem, literally. They’re tackling famine at the source, training farmers on methods to produce greater yields and more nutritious foods.  Give to Care.

USAID Known as a leader in disaster relief,  USAID’s Food for Peace program has fed 3 billion people around the world.  In addition to providing emergencies food assistance, they also strive to get ahead of the problem with community outreach programs like nutritional education classes for new mothers, feeding programs in schools, and programs to train farmers to find better and more reliable ways to sow and tend to their crops. For more information on USAID,  click here.