Giving thanks to those who harvested the food on our plates today

Community Engagement Intern Brittany Collins

Happy Thanksgiving!

As we take today to indulge in a delicious meal with our closest friends and family and reflect on what we are most thankful for, let us consider where the food on our plates has come from.  Think about the farmers that nourished their crops so that they could be on our plates today.  How many of us actually know where our food comes from? 

Say it with sweet potatoes - "don't uproot foreign aid!"

Today and in coming days Congress is debating cuts to life-saving foreign aid, and Oxfam volunteer leaders are delivering petitions to save foreign aid to Senate offices along with an unusual twist:  sweet potatoes.  Why sweet potatoes?  Because this Thanksgiving staple is also a feature of aid programs that boost nutrition in Africa. 

 

A special orange-fleshed variety (conventionally bred) is rich in vitamin-A and drought resistant.  Promoting it in place of less-nutritious varieties in communities in Africa has helped boost immune systems, prevent blindness, and improve livelihoods for growers.   (A keen-eyed foodie will know that those pictured above are actually yams doing their best sweet potato impression.)

But this noble root is just one out of hundreds of such simple, cost-effective projects that are saving lives and livelihoods around the world - and funded by US foreign aid programs like Feed the Future!  

So before scooping brown sugar, pineapple, and marshmallow on top of yours, grab a few extra and get in touch with Oxfam community leaders in your area.  Join them in delivering this letter to your Senators along with a petition signed by more than 20,000 people nationwide. 

  
  
  
  

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

SF Bay Area Oxfam Action Corps Hunger Banquet and "Africa's Last Famine" Screening

Congratulations to the San Francisco Bay Area Oxfam Action Corps on their successful Hunger Banquet and film screening of "Africa's Last Famine"!  

Posted 11/15/2011

This past weekend we held a Film Screening and Hunger Banquet in Berkeley. Thank you to all who attended! We had an educational and inspirational evening!

The evening started with remarks from Thao Nguyen, a local musician and Oxfam Sister on the Planet. We then viewed "Africa's Last Famine", a new film co-produced by LinkTV and Oxfam America. If you haven't seen the film, it'savailable online and worth watching, as it addresses the ongoing food crisis and famine in the Horn of Africa and provides examples of innovative programs that are working to give poor farmers resilience to survive and thrive during droughts.

We then moved on to the Hunger Banquet. From the start, the inequalities were evident, as only three people sat at a decorated table with place settings while most were sitting on the floor. The high income received a nutritious and gourmet meal, and middle income ate rice and beans. The majority in the low income group on the floor were served last and only had rice to eat on corn husks--no plates, no utensils. After eating, guests shared heartfelt comments about poverty and hunger. Simulating global inequalities within physical proximity made the experience very impactful for many. Several chose to act immediately by writing letters to our Senators. Thank you to those who wrote letters--we'll be hand-delivering the 11 letters soon! And everyone signed the petition asking Congress to fully fund poverty-focused aid in the upcoming budget decisions.

If you missed the event and want to take action, please consider the following:

1) Sign the online petition

2) Write or call your senator. Email us if you want help wording your request.

3) Give back this holiday season with Oxfam America Unwrapped

4) Attend Seeds of Resistance on December 6, by Women's Earth Alliance

5) Visit the Revolution Hunger website

Special thanks to Cancun Sabor Mexicano, Stella Nonna, and Gather for food donations and to Women's Earth Alliance and Revolution Hunger for partnering with us!

Oxfam America Hunger Banquets throughout the U.S.!

Another amazing blog post by Drew Love of the Boston Oxfam Action Corps!

Think Fast, Imagine 1.85 Billion Hands 

by: Drew Love 

Can you imagine my two hands? Of course you can. They look, by all accounts, similar to your two hands. Although I don’t trim my nails as often as I should, and I’m terrible at moisturizing. But for the most part, you can imagine what a pair of hands looks like. 

What about your hands and my hands? The mental arithmetic becomes slightly more difficult, but not terribly so. Yet at some point, if we continue to add pairs of hands to this mental image, there comes a time when you reach the limit of your imagination. We can only imagine so many hands at a time, and it’s usually a very small number. 

So if I ask you to imagine 1.85 billion hands, is it even worth the question? 

And if I tell you that those 1.85 billion hands are a part of the 925 million people who went hungry last year, can we really understand the scope of that hunger?  

The challenging part is that even if we could understand the depth of that problem by reading a statistic, we would reach that understanding alone, most likely in front of our computers and in silence. 

Now that’s depressing. 

But there are better ways to understand the challenges we face. The most visceral form of learning is to go through an experience, not just read a statistic. The most empowering way to resolve a challenge is to do it with a sense of community, not in isolation. 

So would you like to learn about hunger in the only way we can, by experiencing it? And would you like to learn about it in the only context that will ever create a solution, with a community? 

We ask you to become part of that experience, part of that community, and part of the solution of reaching out to those 1.85 billion hands, so that 925 million people no longer have to go hungry. 

Learn more about this experience: host your own Hunger Banquet and attend Boston's Action Corps Hunger Banquet this weekend. 

 In addition to Boston's Action Corps Hunger Banquet, there is an upcoming Oxfam America Hunger Banquet hosted by the Madison Oxfam Action Corps.


The Oxfam Action Corps teams in Minneapolis, Chicago, and San Francisco have already hosted powerful Hunger Banquets this season, as has Iowa, pictured here.  

Find an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet in your area in the ACT FAST calendar, Change the world. Start here.  

Act now! Deep budget cuts put millions at risk

The senate is getting ready to vote on amendments to the budget, and the proposed cuts to foreign assistance could cost lives.

At risk: Programs that put 33 million kids into classrooms. Funding that has boosted food production in parts of sub-Saharan Africa by 400%. Projects that help tens of millions survive natural disasters and violent conflict.

Will you help fight for life-changing programs like these?

Please call your senators today and send a clear message: OPPOSE amendments that cut poverty-fighting foreign assistance.

On the Senate's slash and burn list: Aid for disaster victims. Programs that put kids in classrooms. Food security and hunger prevention programs. Call your senators NOW and tell them not to cut foreign assistance. Use the instructions below to make your call, then tell us how it went.

Here's how to make your call:

1. Call your senators and tell the person who answers the phone your name and where you're calling from.
   [Find phone numbers for the Senators of the 112th Congress]
2. Tell the staffer: "My name is __________, and I'm calling from _______ to ask my senator to oppose amendments that cut foreign assistance programs. Don't try to balance the budget on the backs of the world's poorest people. It's not right or fair. These programs give poor people the tools they need to help lift themselves out of hunger and poverty. With high food prices and extreme weather events threatening millions, now is not the time to disrupt life-saving work around the world. Please oppose amendments that cut foreign assistance."
3. Once you've ended your calls, click here to tell us how they went!

These cuts won't solve our budget crisis but they could make the difference between life and death for many of the world's poorest people. Will you take a minute right now to make the call?

Thanks in advance for your time – your words will make a big difference in this fight.

Sincerely,

Judy Beals
Oxfam America Advocacy Fund

Boston GROW Training and World Food Day Celebration for Local Boston Volunteers

Boston Oxfam Action Corps World Food Day Training- October 16, 2011

This blog entry comes to us courtesy of a Boston Oxfam Action Corps volunteer, Drew Love, who attended the GROW training session held on World Food Day!

The food movement, and other progressive movements, speak eloquently about the importance of “community.” But no matter how much ink is spilled over the issue, community is something that can only happen by people showing up.

So on Sunday, October 16^th, I decided to show up to the Boston Oxfam Action Corps training along with dozens of other people from the Massachusetts area.

What brought me there was a journey I started about two years ago while reading, volunteering, and interning for food justice projects.

There seemed to be plenty of bad things happening in the food system, and I wanted to do something about it. To name just a few:

·      Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change

·      About 33% of US Adults are obese, a problem strongly correlated to the food we eat

·      From seed sales to organic food production, power and ownership in the food system has become increasingly monopolized

And of course I could go on about all the bad stuff, but I showed up that Sunday to learn more about the good stuff.

Fortunately, I was far from the only one.

The round table introductions revealed a group of people who were born in all parts of the country and in some cases from other parts of the world. There were people in their early 20’s, and people in their 50’s and 60’s. There were different genders, races, ages, accents and viewpoints.

Yet we had all come there with a shared value. We knew it was important to create a just and sustainable food system.

We wanted to learn how that could be done.

Just one of the impressive projects we learned about was theSystem of Rice Intensification (SRI), an innovative approach to rice production that could increase yields by 50% while reducing water usage by half.

So you’d have to wonder what kind of fertilizer, pesticide, and/or multi million dollar machine could lead to these miraculous results.

And you’d have to keep on wondering because SRI is simply a method. The method is taught from one farmer to another, forming a global patchwork of farmer communities. These communities are bound by their shared livelihood, the shared educational experience of learning about SRI, and the shared benefits of living better, with a smaller footprint, on their own farms.

A similar sense of community came out of the Boston Oxfam Action Corp meeting that Sunday. Even though we began with introductions that revealed just how different we might be, we ended that workshop as a community of people brought together by shared values, and bonded through a shared experience.

That Sunday gave us the opportunity to create community, and as that community starts to flourish there is no doubt that it will make significant contributions to the food justice movement that Oxfam and so many others are dedicated to.

-Drew Love

Oxfam Action Corps Volunteer

NYC World Food Day Event: "Hunger in a World of Plenty" U.S. Premiere Screening and Panel Discussion

Community Engagement Intern Brittany Collins

In just one of many successful and thought-provoking events held throughout the country by the Oxfam Action Corps this past Sunday, the New York City Oxfam Action Corps hosted the U.S. premiere of the documentary Hunger in a World of Plenty.  The screening was followed by a great panel discussion about the issues brought up by the film and the issues very closely tied to Oxfam's GROW campaign!  

Make sure that you've signed Oxfam America's petition to urge Congress to preserve foreign aid (less than 1% of the entire budget) in this time of spending cuts.  

by Avi Smolen

There are many big questions to ask about the causes of hunger today:

• Does it occur because there is not enough food for everyone?
• Does it occur because of climate change?
• Does it occur because of insufficient infrastructure?

The simple answer is that none of these are the simple causes of hunger today. There is enough food today to feed everyone on the planet, though the wealth inequality means that some people go hungry while others struggle to lose weight (U.S. obesity epidemic). Climate change can lead to both insufficient rain and floods that kill crops and therefore affect the quantity of food available. Yet there are also advanced growing techniques that will allow us to maintain an adequate supply of food, at least for the near future. (Both climate change and wealth inequality are major issues about which we should be concerned.) Infrastructure isn’t the problem either. While in some places poor roads or lack of railroads can hamper the distribution of food, there is no reason that local communities cannot grow food nearby.

Panel from "Hunger in a World of Plenty" - (left to right) Vice President for Africa Programs Dr. Idrissa Dicko (The Hunger Project), Director of Education and Community Engagement Stephanie Ives (American Jewish World Service), Senior Campaigns Advisor Rohit Malpani (Oxfam America), and Senator Kirstin Gillibrand's constituent liaison/immigration caseworker Julina Guo (moderator) are introduced by Oxfam Action Corps NYC Co-Organizer - Arielle Cahill-Hassid.

Photo by Adam Fischmann

At the event “Hunger in a World of Plenty,” sponsored by Oxfam NYC Action Corps, American Jewish World Service, Union Theological Seminary and The Hunger Project, these were the topics of conversation. After a screening of the film by the same name, a number of panelists discussed food justice issues affecting world hunger today. The issues are quite complex, but I was left with a few major takeaways.

1. The fluctuation in food prices is caused by excessive capital in commodities markets leading to speculation (in addition to real factors such as weather and production). Regulations can help prevent such severe price increases, and rules have just been passed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (given authority in the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul) to do just this.
2. A rise in food prices that may be a minor inconvenience to middle class residents of developed countries means hunger for many in developing nations. They cannot afford price increases, as many of them already spend a majority of their income on food.
3. The best way to ensure that hunger is reduced and eventually solved is to provide communities with the resources and tools that they need to grow at least some of their own food. In this system they will be able to provide for themselves, they will be less dependent on imported food, and will be less affected by price fluctuations in the market.
4. Developed countries like the U.S. play a major part in preventing this from happening. Subsidies, which significantly lower the cost of production for farmers in developed countries, allow nations like the U.S. to dump excess rice, corn, or other crops in developing nations, often under the guise of food aid. While in the short term such food aid is necessary to combat immediate lack of food, such practices can destroy local economies. A prime example is the dumping of free rice in Haiti in the months after the earthquake, making it impossible for Haitian rice farmers to sell their products and harming their livelihood.

There are so many more complexities to current food justice and food aid issues, but what gives me some solace is that organizations like the co-sponsors of this event are working to change the system. AJWS has a fantastic petition to Reverse Hunger by maintaining funding for food aid (a fraction of 1% of the national budget) and using those allocations smartly. I am hopeful that we can make an impact and I hope to attend an event in ten years about the progress we have made and how close we are to ending world hunger.

Avi Smolen is currently the Communications Manager for Progressive Jewish Alliance & Jewish Funds for Justice, a domestic social justice organization, in New York. He graduated from Rutgers University in 2009 with a BA in Political Science and minor concentrations in Jewish Studies and Psychology. Previously, Avi worked as a Faiths Act Fellow in Washington DC at the Malaria Policy Center, where he focused on engaging college students in multi-faith global health activism, and as Development and Communications Associate in the New York office of Keren Or, a Center in Jerusalem for blind and multi-disabled children and young adults. Avi is also an active volunteer with Oxfam Action Corps NYC.