Billion dollar bailouts, million dollar bonuses. I know it’s all relative, but these are numbers that most people in the world, including me, cannot fathom. Well, here are some more reprehensible numbers that will rock your psyche: 963 million people in this world are desperately hungry. They are either undernourished, or malnourished to the point that more than 9 million people die every year from hunger. That’s 25,000 people a day. Let me say that again – 25,000 people die every day because they starve to death.

I wonder if the people in charge of handing out these insane sums of money, as well as the executives accepting the bonuses, could sleep at night if they knew how many lives their money could save if they used it to feed the hungry. In the latest AIG bonus scandal, the $165 million could become a pretty impactful bonus to 3 million starving children worldwide – it could feed them for an entire year.

A lot of people have been thinking about this bailout scandal in relation to food. Have you seen Sean Penn’s public service announcement? Wow – talk about impact. The Oscar-winning actor is making a lot of us think twice about money with his new PSA for the World Food Programme. Take a look:

Sean Penn PSA

Three billion dollars. Can you believe it? Just 3 billion dollars – a true drop in the bucket compared to the sickening amount of money that’s been spent to bail out failed financial institutions and keep soldiers fighting in Iraq.

So what can we do about it? Though we wish we could take back that AIG bonus money to feed the millions of children who are literally wasting away, we can’t. That money is gone, wasted instead to feed Wall Street executive egos. But we can help in many ways.

First, you can fill an empty stomach by filling an empty cup. The World Food Programme’s Fill the Cup campaign needs just $50 to feed a starving school child for one whole year. That’s slightly more than seven cents a day! You can make a personal donation online to
Fill the Cup.

Stay on top of the latest hunger news and ways to help by joining the World Food Programme on Facebook. And then, you can connect with your friends and ask them to join you in the war against hunger.

You can show your support by purchasing one of the many unique World Food Programme “Feed Bags.” These canvas bags come with a good deed. Buy the “Feed 1 Bag” and you can feed one child for one year. You can also buy a “Feed 2 Bag” and the “Feed 100 Bag.” I love that concept. Get something, give something.

You can also play games and donate food for the hungry at the same time. If you haven’t checked it out yet, go over to Free Rice. For every correct answer you get in the vocabulary game, sponsors donate 10 grains of rice to feed hungry children.

If you want to be more involved in the fight against hunger, you can join One. This grassroots campaign, started by Bono and Bobby Shriver, has more than 2 million people world-wide fighting on behalf of policies that will protect the world’s poorest and feed our fellow men.

Or, you can sit back and find 25,000 reasons today alone why not to help feed a starving child. By tomorrow, 25,000 children will have died waiting for you and everyone else in the world who is able to help to step up and do something to end world hunger. Let’s not let them down.



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