This Lent the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is joining with the Caritas Internationalis federation to campaign for the complete elimination of hunger.
“It’s a real goal, totally real,” said Development and Peace national council president Pat Kennedy. “That’s what the world needs to wake up to — it is a real goal. It’s not just something we should live with. We should be outraged by the number of people who are going hungry in the world.”
Development and Peace is calling its 2014 Share Lent campaign, “One human family — food for all.”
The World Food Program of the United Nations points out that today’s 842 million hungry represents a 17 per cent drop in absolute numbers from 1990. Of these, 827 million live in developing countries where, on average, 14.3 per cent of the population is undernourished.
The World Bank has named elimination of hunger and extreme poverty as its priority. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has pegged the cost of eliminating World Hunger at $30 billion per year. The World Food Program estimates it would cost just $3.2 billion per year to feed all 66 million school-age children currently without enough food. The Sochi Winter Olympics cost $50 billion.
“To die of hunger in our world of plenty is a scandal and denies the most basic human right: the right to food,” writes Archbishop Paul-André Durocher, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in his introduction to the Lenten campaign.
Development and Peace is part of a global effort to take on hunger.
“The strength of this program with the Caritas Internationalis federation is to direct people around the world, in Catholic churches around the world,” said Kennedy. “There’s going to be great strength in that.”
The best part of the Development and Peace approach to global hunger is its guaranteed effectiveness, said Kennedy. The money Development and Peace spends on helping small-scale farmers get their products to market, or helping communities organize to demand services and infrastructure from their own governments almost always brings real results, he said. That’s because it’s all about giving people in poor countries the tools to solve their own problems.
“We’re not imposing solutions on them. It’s for local groups to find their own solutions and build capacity within their own countries and to work toward food security and food sovereignty in their own land,” Kennedy said.
From ThinkFast — the annual educational 25-hour fast — to the Share Lent collection on April 6, this year’s Lenten campaign from Development and Peace is full of familiar elements. (In the Archdiocese of Toronto, ShareLife makes an annual allocation to the national Catholic development agency.)
Development and Peace is also promoting a Good Friday fast in solidarity with the world’s hungry. People participating in the fast can create a personal fundraising page on the Development and Peace web site (devp.org) where friends and family can make secure donations in support.
By texting “peace” to 45678 on a cell phone donors can send a quick $10 to Development and Peace. The organization also accepts online donations at www.devp.org/donate. By phone, call 1-888-234-8533.