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Hunger

Hunger is the lack of access to sufficient food due to poverty or constrained resources. "At risk of hunger" or "food insecure" refers to the lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times due to lack of financial resources

• Every fourth person standing in a soup kitchen line is a child.

• Children are twice as likely as adults to live in households where someone experiences hunger.

• More than 40% of low-income children live in households that are hungry or at risk of hunger.

• Hungry children suffer two to four times as many health problems as those who are not and are more likely to be ill or absent from school.

Hunger in a world of plenty

There is food enough for all, yet hunger persists. Hunger continues to plague our world because people either do not have access to food or they cannot afford to buy the food that is available. Over 850 million people around the world receive insufficient nutrition. One in five of them is a child. Most live in the so-called “developing world.” But hunger haunts us at home too, and the number of poor and hungry among our fellow citizens continues to rise. While the world has made great strides in the struggle against hunger, we are a long way from realizing the goal of the last World Food Conference to cut hunger in half by 2015. The roots of hunger are found in poverty, war, inequitable trade patterns, ignorance, and disease. There are solutions. Creative initiatives by impoverished people supported by donor organizations are making a difference. If we work together, we can fashion a world that works for all.

• 850 million people are undernourished — nearly three quarters of them living in rural farming communities. That’s about equal to the entire population of the Western Hemisphere.

• 6 million children under the age of five die each year as a result of hunger.

• Most of these people are not victims of famine that so dominates our news, but suffer from what the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls a “covert famine” of chronic hunger and malnutrition stunting growth, sapping energy and potential.

• One in seven children born in countries where hunger is most common will die before age five.

• The world's 225 richest people have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the world (2.5 billion people).

There is no way to get used to hunger. All the time something is moving in your stomach. You feel the emptiness. You feel your intestines moving. They are too empty, and they are searching for something to fill up on.

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Roots of Hunger

POVERTY: 1.2 billion people in developing countries live on an income of $1 a day or less. While poverty has declined in some areas, especially East Asia, in other regions, especially Africa, the number of persons living in extreme poverty has increased. Living at such a marginal level means an incredible vulnerability to changes in climate, crop prices — to health problems.

POWERLESSNESS: Hungry people often feel, and are, unable to affect their circumstances due to illiteracy, political oppression, or lack of access to land, credit, education, and political decision-making. If they are women, children or ethnic minorities, they are even more vulnerable.

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Source:
http://www.justharvest.org/ChildHung.shtml

Consequences of Child Poverty

Sexual exploitation The worst consequence of child poverty is undoubtedly sexual exploitation leaving big traumas in children's life. Read More

HIV/AIDS The worst disease in the world leave very big consequence on poor children's life.   Read More

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