No to Hunger

How many times does the thought of eating food cross your mind in a day?

I'm guessing, more than thrice.

What kind of food would be great to have the next time you eat?

I'm sure you have a lot of choices in mind.

How many times have you actually eaten the food that you want to have that crossed your mind today?

Perhaps at least once.

Have you ever worried that your next meal time might not come for hours and eventually days and that you would not be able to eat what you want or, more pressingly, not be able to eat anything at all?

Millions of people all over the world have.

Ten days ago, I committed to participate in a 'campaign to raise awareness about the urgent hunger crisis affecting over one billion people around the world'.

The global humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger is launching No Hunger with a trailer to Al Gore’s next film—a film that doesn’t exist yet—about acute malnutrition, a disease that kills 5 million children each year.

I signed the petition asking Al Gore to make No Hunger his next film, a film that will open the eyes of everyone to the harsh reality of the hunger and malnutrition crisis today in order 'to end childhood deaths from malnutrition—a predictable, preventable condition that threatens 55 million children every year'.

The world's hungry exceeds one billion and that definitely tells us something; it tells us to do something.

Just as the 2007 Nobel Prize Winning work, An Inconvenient Truth, helped reshape public perceptions of climate change, we hope that No Hunger will help attract the public support needed to reach every acutely malnourished child.

The campaign’s overall objective is to reshape public understanding of acute malnutrition. The new story is we now have the tools to end acute malnutrition and we’re convinced a film by Al Gore could reshape perceptions and mobilize the resources needed to end hunger-related deaths.

The No Hunger initiative, which began in Madrid, has already collected more than 64,000 signatures and is endorsed by “Heroes” co-star Jimmy Jean-Louis and numerous French and Spanish actors.

The petition will be presented to Al Gore this December at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

The first step before action is awareness. One cannot act on something he does not know about. Go ahead and discover what is there to be learned about hunger and malnutrition. Be counted.

Remember, "big things come in small packages".

Unlike the cures for many other diseases, the treatment for severe acute malnutrition is not expensive—it costs about $50 and doesn’t require prescription drugs. Instead, it relies on nutrient dense, ready-to-use food products, such as plumpy’nut, that can take a child from the brink of death and restore him to health in as little as six weeks.

Click here to view a video report about plumpy’nut by Anderson Cooper.

By learning about what we can do to save the people suffering from hunger and malnutrition, we are slowly getting closer to making this world a better place.

Be aware. Be heard. Be involved.

Together, let's say NO to HUNGER.