ONE campaign to end poverty and hunger

With the excess of Easter now behind us, how are you?  Do you still have mounds of chocolate to munch your way through, or did you completely over-indulge and devour every last morsel before sunset arrived on Easter Sunday?  Anyone manage to eat their own weight in chocolate?

Sophia and Dexter received a grand total of 10 eggs between them over the weekend.  Being only three and one respectively and having no concept of 'taking it easy' when it comes to sugary treats, my husband and I are trying to eke out the chocolate.  After all, having to deal with small children on a sugar high after eating too much chocolate is not good for anyone's sanity!

The Easter weekend is a wonderful tradition and I feel so lucky that we live in a country where we have access to a variety of good, (mostly) healthy food and are able to eat as much as we want.  Sadly, it's not the same story for so many children living elsewhere in the world. 

Here comes the serious bit...

According to the organisation, ONE, 1.4 billion people – that's about 20% of the world’s population – live in extreme poverty and more than two-thirds of these extremely poor people (nearly 1 billion of them) do not have enough food to eat.  This year alone, 178 million children - more than twice the number of children in the United States - will reach their third birthday stunted.  Their brains and bodies will never fully recover, limiting their chance to learn and grow and this is a direct result of malnourishment.  This sort of damage occurs to so many children by the age of just three-years-old.  That's the same age as Sophia. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Now ONE is fighting to change this. 

ONE is a grassroots advocacy and campaigning organisation that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.  It was co-founded by Bono, Bob Geldof and others back in 2004 and is today backed by more than two and half million people.  ONE's latest campaign, launched today, highlights the travesty of malnourishment in impoverished countries and calls for real change to break the cycle of poverty and hunger.  You might have heard about this already; seen it on the television, heard about it on the radio or read about it in a newspaper or maybe even online.  Thrive: Food. Farming. Future is an ambitious three-year campaign to seek out and fight the root causes of hunger and poverty.  According to ONE, "if we achieve our goals by 2015, we could see 15 million fewer children chronically malnourished and 50 million people lifted out of extreme poverty."

How will they do this?  ONE is calling on African leaders, donor governments and the private sector to focus on 30 of the poorest countries that have smart agriculture and nutrition plans.  These plans are tested, costed and affordable and ONE will demand political leadership and financial backing to put into these plans into practice.  Investing in agriculture will help end the vicious cycle of poverty and extreme hunger by stimulating rural economies, creating jobs, raising income, reducing food prices and increasing export revenue.

But, ONE is also asking us to add our voices to the campaign.  You might think that one voice may not result in much action but one voice + one voice + one voice (and so on) can quickly lead to real change...

ONE has an e-petition for us to add our voice to the campaign and put pressure on the leaders on the G8, the eight largest economies in the world, to "implement a bold global plan to ensure 50 million people escape poverty through agriculture and 15 million children no longer endure chronic malnutrition".  Will you sign it?

I'm proud to say I'm a ONE mum - part of a group of women bloggers* who are actively supporting the organisation and their Thrive: Food. Farming. Future campaign - and will be writing about my support over the coming weeks and months.  Please do come and join in. If we all come together and speak in one voice, we might just be able to help make a difference.

* My fellow ONE mums are Michelle from Mummy from the Heart, Jennifer from BritMums, Alex from Doing It All For Aleyna, Melitsa from Raising Playful Tots, Kate from Kate on Thin Ice and Michelle from The American Resident.  Like me, they will all be writing about their support for ONE and this campaign in particular, so please do check them out.