Does your dinner look something like this? Well, let me tell you this: while you enjoy a hearty meal with friends and family, this is what the dinner looks like for some people…
Shocked? I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty for having dinner, but here’s a quick fact. While you’re having dinner, 1 in every 9 people in India have to make do with sleeping hungry. The statistics are alarming and show how hunger is so much more than missing a meal. It is a global crisis that the world is plagued with. Here are some more astonishing facts which you might not be aware of:
This post may contain some disturbing images. Viewer discretion advised.
1. Hunger kills more people across the world than AIDS, malaria and TB combined, making it the number 1 cause of death on the planet.
2. According to the United Nations, one person dies of hunger every 4 seconds. That’s 21,000 people every day!
This website shows the number of deaths that occur every four seconds. This is painful.
3. As many as 836 million Indians survive on less than Rs 20 per day.
4. India tops the world hunger list with 194 million people. As many as one-third of the world’s hungry live here. This Hindu infographic lists the top undernourished countries:
5. Around 1 in 9 Indians will sleep hungry tonight. That’s no less than 230 million people!
6. Globally, the death toll owing to poor nutrition amounts to nearly half the number of deaths in kids under the age of 5.
7. Roughly 100 million kids in developing countries are underweight – that’s one in every six kids.
8. If women farmers had similar access to facilities as men, the number of hungry people in the world could go down by up to 150 million.
9. According to UNICEF, 80% of the world’s stunted children live in just 14 countries, including India.
10. At least USD 3.2 billion is needed ever year to reach all the 66 million hungry school-going children, according to the World Food Programme.
What’s the point, you ask? Here’s what you can do:
This Independence Day, we have joined the Robin Hood Army and Uber to launch #Mission100k.
#Mission100k is a war which Indian and Pakistani students are fighting together against hunger. The campaign aims to unite students to rally together and serve food to 100,000 homeless countrymen on both sides of the border.
If you would like to play your role, here’s how you can do it: www.robinhoodarmy.com/ mission100k/
There are 300 million hungry people in India and Pakistan; if you can’t feed them all – let’s start with one.
Statistics via www.wfp.org , stophungernow.org , and bhookh.com