The Bread for the World Institute, the research arm of the faith-based anti-hunger lobbying group Bread for the World, recently released its Hunger 2008 report, Working Harder for Working Families. It offers a compelling mix of powerful photographs, personal stories, and fine clear data illustrations. It describes food insecurity and hunger without either exaggeration or understatement, and places hunger correctly in the context of poverty and the low-wage labor market. A particular strength is its economically astute focus on how public policy can support work and asset building. These emphases give the report a politically centrist flavor, but it still packs a good hard policy wallop. You may well close the report with a new determination to do something about what you see. More importantly, you may have an improved diagnosis about what that something should be.
Teach people to grow their own food. If they don't have a small flower bed, then have community gardens. The work not only burns calories and strengthens the body, it provides confidence, security, and nearly free food. We are pretty low income, but are happy to live on cheap/free veggies (donated from friends and families gardens then canned by me), some of which were grown in 2 of my flower beds!
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