Free Essay On Feed The Children
Subjecting a child to good nutrition in the first three years of his or her life is significant for establishing a good basis that has implications on the future mental and physical health. However, food security is an obstacle that threatens such a good foundation and academic achievement of a child. It can be estimated that around 15.8 million children in the United States alone, live in households that are unable to consistently access three meals a day and good nutrition. Although food security threatens an individual’s life, it is more devastating amongst children owing to their increased vulnerability and the potential for causing long-term consequences in their future life.
According to several United Nations reports about food security, the world produces enough food that can feed the whole human race. However, it is so unfortunate that only a few individuals in developed countries have access to that food. The most affected population is children from Africa, Asia, and some countries in the North American region where two meals a day are considered a luxury. We can say that the main cause of hunger among children is poverty and lack of education. This leads to malnutrition and other devastating effects that threaten the survival of such a kid.
Basically, hunger can be meant by protein- energy malnourishment, and it can be defined as the deficiency of calories and proteins. Protein is significant to a person’s body system since it provides vital amino acids as well as progression and maintenance of body muscles. In children, undernutrition occurs in three forms, and it can be assessed through measurement of height and weight. In this scenario, a child may be undersized for its age or underweight. The number of childhood deaths resulting from hunger can be estimated to be seven million, the worst hit area being the Sub-Saharan Africa where one in ten children die under the age of five. Poor nutrition also plays a big role in this number of deaths whereby children who are poorly nurtured agonize up to 5 months of sickness each year.
The main source of child starvation is poverty. High levels of poverty remain a great problem in developing countries and despite development that reduced the value of the dollar, poverty remains a threat to life. Apart from hunger, poverty is also responsible for other facets of children poor health such as development of urban slums and poor agricultural societies that lack proper sanitation. The most vulnerable members of such a community are children.
We can fight child hunger if we joined hands to end this life threatening menace. Since the world produces enough food to feed the whole human population, we can come up with mechanisms and policies that if well implemented; we can save children from hunger. We must improve on existing programs that fight hunger among children. The Kids Café program provides free meals and snacks to children from household that receive low-income where children gather after school hours to get free meals. There is also the Backpack Program where more than 21 million children qualify for reduced- price or free meals throughout the school.
We can improve on such programs by donating money to fund all these programs so that they can be accessed by most children in the world. Donation towards such programs starts with you and me. We must be kind enough to save children that are facing hunger. We can do this by direct donation and encouraging schools to embrace program that aims at donating food whereby instead of throwing food that has not been consumed, it can be collected and preserved so that it can benefit a child somewhere who is starving. Wastage of food is also a common trend in many rich households. We can be humanitarian enough and donate suck kind of food to a child who is starving. The food may seem to be not important to you, but somewhere, there is a person who is wishing to get such food. If we all donate a minimum of twenty dollars, we can make a huge difference because this fund will go straight to programs that cater for the welfare of hungry children.
We can pass such kind of information to people through simple advertisements or organizing charity event that champion campaigns towards such programs. We can encourage financial companies to endorse campaigns whereby the money that they get from the sale of their products, a certain percent of it is channeled towards funding of programs that fight hunger. Many people can donate if a popular company is involved in such a program since people will always be proud to be associated with a famous company and at the same time doing something that is charitable. Governments of developed states like the United States can give aid to countries that are facing hunger. Apart from giving aid donations they can partner with government of affected countries and come up with charity organizations that cater for the welfare of hungry children. Together, we can end hunger in children because we are capable of doing that, it is only about the willingness to help a brother and sister who is suffering out there.
Work Cited
Feed the Children,. 'Partner With Feed The Children To Create A World Where No Child Goes To Bed Hungry'. N.p., 2015. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.
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