Letting little go to waste

Hi, I am Corey. I think you will find the following websites useful in learning how to stop wasting food. There are millions of people who go to bed nightly hungry. If we all try together I think we can accomplish so much,

There is one group Loaves and Fishes that donates food to people in need. There is another group called Hidden Harvest that harvests vegetables after farmers are finished with their crops. Tons of tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce and corn would just be tilled in.

There are people that just “dumpster dive” weekly because grocery stores throw away good food. One person stated that 90 % of the food she eats comes from “dumpster diving”.

I think we can all do this together. Let each of us try to waste less.

Please enjoy these websites.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50135403n
Unfortunately, the United States throws out tons of perfectly good food every day. Some people, however, are trying to stop the waste and help the hungry by intercepting tossed food before it gets to the landfill. Tracy Smith reports.

http://www.hiddenharvest.org

http://www.loavesandfishes.org/

Stop Wasting Food

Corey

Feed Our Vets

by Ericilda
As Hunger among Veterans Grows, So Do the Costs

The recession in the United States beginning in 2007 has had a catastrophic impact on the financial security of almost all Americans. However, it has had a particularly harsh influence on the Veteran population. Hunger among its citizens and especially Veterans, creates a substantial cost to the country as a whole.

The number of hungry people in the United States has risen in parallel with the decreasing number of job opportunities. 36 million people were considered food insecure before 2007 but that number has skyrocketed to 48.8 million over the last 4 years.

The needs of transitioning Veterans extend beyond just food assistance. Vets need help with a broad range of issues in addition to fighting hunger for themselves and their families. This list of veteran resources seeks to provide Vets in-need with assistance outside Feed Our Vets’ core mission and service areas.

Feed Our Vets is a nonprofit food pantry created to provide nutritious food to United States veterans whose circumstances have left them on the battlefield of hunger.

The organization stocks food pantries across the country to feed the more than 130,000 veterans who are homeless or hungry on any given night in America. Feed Our Vets serves not only veterans, but also men and women still enlisted in the military, along with their families. For more information, visit www.feedourvets.org.

Feed Our Vets works to establish veteran-oriented food pantries in cities and towns across the United States.

The pantries distribute free food and groceries at regular, scheduled times to U.S. military veterans and their families. Veterans can find a food pantry in their area on the Feed Our Vets resource page,along with other agencies that offer assistance and support for homecoming soldiers.

FEED OUR VETS

http://www.feedourvets.org/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Grants%2BCampaigns

www.jerichoproject.org/

See how Jericho Project is helping homeless veterans today!

http://www.jerichoproject.org/?gclid=CK_4vvS_0rMCFcxAMgodIBYAqg

THE IMAGE ABOVE IS FROM THE PBS WEBSITE THAT HAS GREAT INFORMATION AND RESOURCES FOR VETS WHO HAVE NEEDS.
PBS

“Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

While we work toward developing lasting solutions to hunger, a child dies every six seconds of acute malnutrition.

Ready-to-use foods likePlumpy’nut and Plumpy’doz have revolutionized the way we prevent and treat malnutrition.

Creative Ways to Feed the Hungry

by Albert
Every time in the news we often hear about hunger around the world and ways various organizations are fighting hard to put and end to it, but hunger continues to threaten many people in many nations. The following are ways I think are creative that will enhance our efforts to feed the hungry:

1. Cash and vouchers for work

Many countries that donate emergency food aid are moving away from shipping bags of food and toward using vouchers or other methods for local purchase. The United Nations World Food Program is also using cash, vouchers and electronic transfers ― often by cell phone ― when circumstances allow.

Vouchers solve many of the serious problems that have always plagued in-kind food aid: food can get to the hungry quickly; there are no transport or storage costs; it works in dangerous situations; it allows recipients to buy the food they want and increases the welcome for refugees and contributes to the local economy.

While vouchers are a creative solution, there are projects that go further. Cash for Work not only feeds people in an emergency, it can improve local agricultural conditions so that fewer emergencies happen. In 2007, for example, World Concern began to use Cash for Work in refugee camps in Chad that housed people fleeing Darfur and eastern Chad. The program hires thousands of people to plant trees and build small dams and rock walls on hills to slow the runoff of water.

2. Humanitarian Action

We have the tools to respond with appropriate action in a humanitarian setting. When people are hit by disasters, we must save lives, providing food and work to get people back on their feet. In a place like Darfur, where there is no food, we bring in the food. In a place like Haiti, where some food markets have been restored, but people have no cash, we bring in vouchers.

3. The power of school meals

When you provide food in schools, attendance skyrockets. If girls stay in school, they marry later and have smaller families.
A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister of Cape Verde and I celebrated his government taking over feeding school children. He told me 35 years ago, people considered Cape Verde virtually hopeless. After investing in its biggest asset -- its people -- it's on track to meet every Millennium Development Goal.

4. Safety Nets

When disaster strikes or a food crisis hits, 80 percent of the world has no backup plan or safety net. But Brazil has gotten it right. They are linking small farmers to schools. People get cash transfers if their children get good grades, go to health clinics and get immunized.
Brazil is beating hunger faster than any other nation on earth. And they estimate that this costs them less than 1 percent of their GDP.

5. Connecting farmers to markets

Connecting farmers to markets lifts them out of poverty. In Gulu, Uganda, the stronghold of the Lord's Resistance Army, to see a new warehouse that WFP built. It's a place that has been dependant on food aid for 20 years.

Small farmers bring in their corn -- moist and dirty -- that would normally bring them $100 a ton. It's cleaned, dried and stored and they can sell it for $400 a ton. The farmers pay $40 a ton for the service and the warehouse is sustainable.
WFP's Purchase for Progress program leverages the power of the purchase by helping small farmers improve the quality of produce, connect to markets and reduce post-harvest waste.

6. Empowering Women
Feed the women and you feed the world. Women produce 50 percent of the food in the world, yet they get little support. With training, yields can rise up to 22 percent. When food is put in the hands of women, children will eat.

In refugee camps and elsewhere, we make sure women get vouchers. We are working to ensure women can safely cook, and don't put themselves in harm's way gathering firewood by providing safe, efficient stoves and teaching women to create fuel briquettes made out of organic waste.

7. Technology Revolution
Technology can revolutionize the battle against hunger. In Syria, refugees from Iraq who were previously seen as a burden to the local community now receive a WFP voucher on their cell phone that they can redeem in local shops. The storekeepers love it. It saves money, preserves beneficiaries' dignity and is fast and easy to use.

8. Building Resiliency
The number of natural disasters is rising exponentially. WFP is working with communities to ensure food security by building resiliency through reclaiming of land, planting of trees and providing irrigation.
In Timbuktu in the early 1990s, WFP worked with the community to plant 40,000 trees, blocking the encroaching desert. I went there recently. The rice fields now protected by these trees are the only area not swallowed by the desert. The yield is so great that their only request was for a machine to pack and sell the rice.

9. Power of Individuals and Partners
I'm often asked, "Isn't fighting hunger overwhelming?" The answer: "Not really. We just need to fill a cup and feed a hungry child, one cup and one child at a time."
Five days after the earthquake struck in Haiti, we had raised nearly $5 million from individuals and companies. Zynga, the biggest online social gaming company, helped us raise $1.5 million for Haiti and exposed our life-saving work to millions of new people by incorporating one of our nutritional products into their game, Farmville. Free Rice is another online game -- it's raised enough money to feed 4.2 million people for a day. With these tools we are feeding one child one cup at a time.
WFP-private sector partnerships bring in vitally needed funds and critical expertise. TNT, a worldwide leader in shipping and logistics, has helped us get more efficiency in our warehousing and trucking operations. DSM, the great nutrition company, has helped us with fortification in our products. We've also linked up with Unilever, Kraft, and Heinz on Project Laser Beam in Bangladesh to provide special nutrition to the youngest and most vulnerable.

10. "Not on My Watch"
Not until a nation's leader says, "No child will die under my watch. I will put the right policies in place to make sure we defeat hunger" will hunger be defeated.

Twenty years ago, China was WFP's biggest project. Today, they contribute to WFP, as does Brazil and other nations. When the Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika was sworn in as head of the African Union, he reminded us that food security is possible in our lifetime and challenged 'Africa to feed Africans'." That type of leadership is mobilizing Africa and changing the face of hunger in the world.
Hunger numbers are going down. But it's still 925 million too many. We are at a critical point where we can harness the power of partnerships, technology, political will and individual commitment to end hunger.