This month I want to talk about a concurrent global pandemic………………...food insecurity. In the US alone, close to 10% of all Americans will experience food insecurity in 2021. COVID-19 has only exacerbated the existing shortage, affecting food chains, supply, and distribution. We pray that these issues will resolve with time, but it takes the coordination of communities, faith-based organizations, food banks, and non-profits, all working together.
Globally, the world is in much more dire straights, as 26% of its population experience some degree of food insecurity. This is unacceptable. Many countries do not have the available infrastructure to grow, store and distribute food to the most vulnerable.
In Africa, there are places where the number is even higher (40 or 50 percent). And in Asia, 30 to 40 percent and so on. Eleven, 11% of the world’s population is undernourished, this means they have a caloric intake below minimum energy requirements. Their bodies are stunted or damaged, that's about 820 million people globally. We are talking about our fellow citizens of this planet, men, women, and children, just like you and I. Moreover, 22% of children in the malnourished column, younger than five are ‘stunted’ – they are significantly shorter than the average for their age, as a consequence of poor nutrition or repeated infection.
Nine percent, 9% of the world population – around 697 million people – are severely food insecure.
One-in-four people globally – 1.9 billion – are moderately or severely food insecure. Remember the number in the USA is One-in-ten!
As for helping those kids, moms & dads, and even grandmothers outside of the USA, that's what Star of Hope International does; we do that. We are the boots on the ground, serving the most basic of human needs, food, water, and education.
If you want to help children outside the US, we desire to partner with you, your generous gifts. We want to give kids school lunch! You see, we educate more than 20,000 children and they need a good school lunch to learn. So we want and need people like you who share our vision to feed them. We want to give kids freshwater to safely drink, cook, bathe and irrigate crops/water livestock.
But that is not the important part, the important part is our kids, all of them, get to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Please help us spread the good news, through meeting basic needs, food, water, education, and a gospel message of HOPE.
BE THE HOPE they receive! Please give HOPE!
Join us, we want you.
Mark Presson