PULLMAN, Wash. — The statistics are grim. More than 852 million people in the world go hungry, according to the Bread for the World organization. In developing countries, 6 million children die each year, mostly from hunger-related causes, and in the United States, 14 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet.
Society’s increasing involvement in the fight against hunger and poverty is the theme for this year’s annual World Food Day Teleconference. “Power of the People: Bottom-up Solutions to Hunger” which is hosted by Ray Suarez of the PBS Jim Lehrer News Hour will air from 9 a.m. to noon, Monday, Oct. 16, in Room 3 of Hulbert Hall on the Pullman campus. The event is free and open to the public. WSU faculty members Kim Campbell of the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and Peter Wyeth of WSU International Programs are hosts.
Suarez will lead a discussion among three notable hunger experts about grassroots activism to address the world hunger crisis. Dr. Makanjuola Alaseinde Arigbede is a Nigerian medical doctor with 25 years’ experience as a development activist. Eva Clayton is a former U.S. congresswoman who served as assistant director general of the United Nations World Food and Agriculture Organization, and Deepa Narayan is the World Bank’s senior adviser for poverty reduction and economic management and lead author of the much-acclaimed, three-volume publication, Voices of the Poor.
The panelists will discuss broad range of topics include the expanding role of individual activists, non-governmental organizations, the Information Revolution, grassroots movements and debt relief for poor nations.
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