A Way to Help

FEED MY STARVING CHILDREN

Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit Christian organization committed to feeding God’s starving children hungry in body and spirit. The approach is simple: children and adults hand-pack meals formulated specially for starving children, and we ship the meals to more than 60 countries around the world. Click here to learn more about FMSC and how you can become involved.

Great Video

Ethiopia

Starvation Among India's Children

PHOTOS and ARTICLE FROM the NY TIMES:

Small, sick, listless children have long been India’s scourge — “a national shame,” in the words of its prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.

China, that other Asian economic powerhouse, sharply reduced child malnutrition, and now just 7 percent of its children under 5 are underweight, a critical gauge of malnutrition. In India, by contrast, despite robust growth and good government intentions, the comparable number is 42.5 percent. Malnutrition makes children more prone to illness and stunts physical and intellectual growth for a lifetime.

There are no simple explanations. Economists and public health experts say stubborn malnutrition rates point to a central failing in this democracy of the poor. Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist, lamented that hunger was not enough of a political priority here. India’s public expenditure on health remains low, and in some places, financing for child nutrition programs remains unspent.

Yet several democracies have all but eradicated hunger. And ignoring the needs of the poor altogether does spell political peril in India, helping to topple parties in the last elections.

Others point to the efficiency of an authoritarian state like China. India’s sluggish and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy has only haltingly put in place relatively simple solutions — iodizing salt, for instance, or making sure all children are immunized against preventable diseases — to say nothing of its progress on the harder tasks, like changing what and how parents feed their children.

But as China itself has grown more prosperous, it has had its own struggles with health care, as the government safety net has shredded with its adoption of a more market-driven economy.

While India runs the largest child feeding program in the world, experts agree it is inadequately designed, and has made barely a dent in the ranks of sick children in the past 10 years.

The $1.3 billion Integrated Child Development Services program, India’s primary effort to combat malnutrition, finances a network of soup kitchens in urban slums and villages.

But most experts agree that providing adequate nutrition to pregnant women and children under 2 years old is crucial — and the Indian program has not homed in on them adequately. Nor has it succeeded in sufficiently changing child feeding and hygiene practices. Many women here remain in ill health and are ill fed; they are prone to giving birth to low-weight babies and tend not to be aware of how best to feed them.

A tour of Jahangirpuri, a slum in this richest of Indian cities, put the challenge on stark display. Shortly after daybreak, in a rented room along a narrow alley, an all-female crew prepared giant vats of savory rice and lentil porridge.

Purnima Menon, a public health researcher with the International Food Policy Research Institute, was relieved to see it was not just starch; there were even flecks of carrots thrown in. The porridge was loaded onto bicycle carts and ferried to nurseries that vet and help at-risk children and their mothers throughout the neighborhood.

So far, so good. Except that at one nursery — known in Hindi as an anganwadi — the teacher was a no-show. At another, there were no children; instead, a few adults sauntered up with their lunch pails. At a third, the nursery worker, Brij Bala, said that 13 children and 13 lactating mothers had already come to claim their servings, and that now she would have to fill the bowls of whoever came along, neighborhood aunties and all. “They say, ‘Give us some more,’ so we have to,” Ms. Bala confessed. “Otherwise, they will curse us.”

None of the centers had a working scale to weigh children and to identify the vulnerable ones, a crucial part of the nutrition program.

Most important from Ms. Menon’s point of view, the nurseries were largely missing the needs of those most at risk: children under 2, for whom the feeding centers offered a dry ration of flour and ground lentils, containing none of the micronutrients a vulnerable infant needs.

In a memorandum prepared in February, the Ministry of Women and Child Development acknowledged that while the program had yielded some gains in the past 30 years, “its impact on physical growth and development has been rather slow.” The report recommended fortifying food with micronutrients and educating parents on how to better feed their babies.

A World Food Program report last month noted that India remained home to more than a fourth of the world’s hungry, 230 million people in all. It also found anemia to be on the rise among rural women of childbearing age in eight states across India. Indian women are often the last to eat in their homes and often unlikely to eat well or rest during pregnancy. Ms. Menon’s institute, based in Washington, recently ranked India below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on its Global Hunger Index.

Childhood anemia, a barometer of poor nutrition in a lactating mother’s breast milk, is three times higher in India than in China, according to a 2007 research paper from the institute.

The latest Global Hunger Index described hunger in Madhya Pradesh, a destitute state in central India, as “extremely alarming,” ranking the state somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia.

More surprising, though, it found that “serious” rates of hunger persisted across Indian states that had posted enviable rates of economic growth in recent years, including Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Here in the capital, which has the highest per-capita income in the country, 42.2 percent of children under 5 are stunted, or too short for their age, and 26 percent are underweight. A few blocks from the Indian Parliament, tiny, ill-fed children turn somersaults for spare change at traffic signals.

Back in Jahangirpuri, a dead rat lay in the courtyard in front of Ms. Bala’s nursery. The narrow lanes were lined with scum from the drains. Malaria and respiratory illness, which can be crippling for weak, undernourished children, were rampant. Neighborhood shops carried small bags of potato chips and soda, evidence that its residents were far from destitute.

In another alley, Ms. Menon met a young mother named Jannu, a migrant from the northern town of Lucknow. Jannu said she found it difficult to produce enough milk for the baby in her arms, around 6 months old. His green, watery waste dripped down his mother’s arms. He often has diarrhea, Jannu said, casually rinsing her arm with a tumbler of water.

Ms. Menon could not help but notice how small Jannu was, like so many of Jahangirpuri’s mothers. At 5 feet 2 inches tall, Ms. Menon towered over them. Children who were roughly the same age as her own daughter were easily a foot shorter. Stunted children are so prevalent here, she observed, it makes malnutrition invisible.

“I see a system failing,” Ms. Menon said. “It is doing something, but it is not solving the problem.”

A Way to Help

Orphaids.org

Orphaids UK is a christian charity working with AIDS orphans in Ecuador, South America and Malawi, Africa.
We have our own project near Santo Domingo de los Colorados in Ecuador and we support other agencies in Malawi who work to provide for the needs of AIDS orphans.
The Ecuador project is a purpose-built complex which provides a home and a caring family for up to 54 orphaned children.
Working on our own merits and with local government, we take in children who have been deemed highest at risk. At risk from HIV/AIDS themselves, abuse and neglect, Orphaids provides for their emotional, spiritual, medical and educational needs.

Africa

Ethiopia

Imagine this was your child.

A Way To Help

CONCERN WORLDWIDE

Concern Worldwide is a non-governmental, international, humanitarian organisation dedicated to the reduction of suffering and working towards the ultimate elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries.

What Concern does

Concern's mission is to help people living in extreme poverty achieve major improvements in their lives. Concern works with the poor themselves, and with local and international partners who share the organisation’s vision, to create just and peaceful societies where the poor can exercise their fundamental rights.

Innovation

Concern is committed to identifying new and innovative approaches to meet the needs of our target group. It has already achieved some significant success in developing innovative approaches to problems. One of the best examples of this is Concern’s approach to tackling acute malnutrition through Community-based Therapeutic Care (CTC), in partnership with Valid International. Click here for more information on CTC.

Africa

Africa

A Way to Help

ORPHAN CARE INTERNATIONAL

Thousands of children dig through the trash each day looking for something of value to sell for food.
Your gift can change their legacy.
Child Sponsorship
Program/Project Sponsorship
orphanCare International serves thousands of children each year . . . children living in orphanages, children living on the street, and children living in foster care.
By reaching out to children living on the street and providing them with food and a safe place to rest their head at night, we can begin to offer additional resources through education and medical care to give these children a second chance for a better future.
Loving and well-trained staff care for the children residing in orphanCare International's sister orphanages. Each child is an individual with specific needs. Through the staff's support and love, those specific needs are met.
We care for the future of each child of God. When they are without a permanent home, orphanCare International is there to provide the skills necessary for a brighter future. We pray that one day our services will no longer be needed. However, until that day comes, our mission is vital for our global children's future.
There are many ways you can join orphanCare International to help these children. Through a sponsorship commitment, you can make a difference for a child.

Orphans

Link

India

Sadly Real: real numbers

Link

A Way To Help

Periodically, I'll try to feature an avenue for people who wish to try to do something. I figure that if I do that, I'll at least generate some traffic for these places. After all, so many people look at these tragedies and wish they could do something. The catch is that no matter how moved you are, you'll forget what you saw in about 3 minutes, as soon as you start thinking about your own bills and the presents you may still have to buy. So I urge you, take what you feel and act on it.

Please help.

AFRICARE

You have the power to help. Your gift to Africare can save a life. It's really that simple.
Right now, help is urgently needed to fund Africare's work in some 25 countries Africa-wide. Our programs are run by and for the people at the grassroots level in Africa ― and that work is made possible by donations from caring people like you.
At the bottom of this page is contact info for any questions you may have. In addition, we've provided links to helpful info available online.

African Refugee Populations

For some perspective:BBC

Africa

Link

Africa

Godlovespeople.com

This is new direction for me. Comically Partisan has a growing following; I've started a new job in downtown Philadelphia, and I'm just about to celebrate my first Christmas in a new apartment.

With all of this stuff going on, and so many things working out for me, I still can't shake the images that I've seen from all over the world. Maybe it's the holidays rolling around, or maybe I'm just more "in tune" with my feelings lately; I'm not sure what brought this on. I feel as though I have to give back, but I have so little to give. Relatively speaking. I mean, in some parts of the world, the daily wage is a dollar or less.

So I've decided to put my Communication degree to some use, and I'm going to try to help in any way I can.

This blog will showcase the suffering going on throughout the world, every minute of every day. I'll let the images I find do the talking for me, although I may occasionally comment or post a relevant article that illustrates my point. And I'll also try to include contact information for NGOs or other organizations that deal with the people and children that will fill these pages.

This blog is probably not going to be a hit. I know it's a grim view. But it's reality, no matter how far away it seems to be. I only hope it brings some attention to the problems faced by the helpless.