Recently a food revolt occurred at a school in Ireland where steamed fruit and vegetables protested about being thrown away despite the fact the hunger levels across the world have reached alarming levels. Students of Our Lady Queen of the Apostles Clonburris National School in Dublin chanted “stop wasting food” and held up signboards which demanded “don’t let me decompose”.
Raising awareness about world hunger
The Hunger Heroes Campaign which is started by Concern Worldwide and seeks to raise awareness of the global hunger crisis and teaches students techniques to help solve it. Schools all over the world are encouraged to participate in Hunger Heroes Day on October 27. To mark the occasions students will be allowed to ditch their uniforms and have fun in costumes whilst also learning how they can help the nearly billion people in the world that face food insecurity.
Hundreds of millions of people are going hungry
11 per cent of the global population according to the United Nations face food insecurity, which amounts to a staggering 815 million people. That figure is up by 38 million people in 2017 from the 777 million people in 2015 that were estimated to be chronically undernourished. According to Concern Worldwide 30 per cent of all food in the world which amounts to a whopping 1.3 billion tonnes is being wasted. The aid agency says that is enough food to feed all the world’s hungry four times over.
Fighting food waste
Lauren Wright of Concern Worldwide says the Hunger for Heroes programme is about fighting hunger and food waste both in our schools and kitchens. It has been designed to be a fun campaign that schools can run about an extremely serious issue that affects everybody. Children are taught about the connection between food waste and world hunger and how to achieve a future in which waste can be significantly reduced.
Decades of progress being reversed by conflict and climate change
Recently the United Nations issued a report on world hunger and the results were not good. For the first time since the turn of the century, the number of hungry people in the world rose. This has sparked worries that both conflict and climate change could be reversing decades of progress.
