2008.08.17: August 17, 2008: Headlines: COS - Paraguay: Hunger: The Tennessean: Paraguay RPCV Todd L. Lake writes: It’s time to live up to our commitment to beat global hunger
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2008.08.17: August 17, 2008: Headlines: COS - Paraguay: Hunger: The Tennessean: Paraguay RPCV Todd L. Lake writes: It’s time to live up to our commitment to beat global hunger
Paraguay RPCV Todd L. Lake writes: It’s time to live up to our commitment to beat global hunger
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Latin America years ago, I witnessed firsthand the daily challenges faced by those in the developing world just to feed themselves. It is clear that the poorest people in the world have to work the hardest to survive. We in Tennessee can be thankful for our nation’s efforts on behalf of the world’s poor and hungry people — such as increasing agricultural food yields, eradicating smallpox, and getting closer to wiping out polio. Twenty-nine million more children in sub-Saharan Africa are in school than a decade ago. The U.S. is providing HIV/AIDS treatment for approximately 1.45 million men, women and children worldwide.
Paraguay RPCV Todd L. Lake writes: It’s time to live up to our commitment to beat global hunger
It’s time to live up to our commitment to beat global hunger
By TODD L. LAKE • August 17, 2008
On a recent trip to Guatemala with one of Belmont University’s discipline-specific mission teams, we encountered a country where most children have stunted mental and physical growth due to malnutrition.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Latin America years ago, I witnessed firsthand the daily challenges faced by those in the developing world just to feed themselves. It is clear that the poorest people in the world have to work the hardest to survive.
Here in the U.S., the migrant workers who pick the produce for our dinner tables cannot afford to buy it for themselves. Many Tennesseans may be surprised to learn that one in eight people in our state suffers from food insecurity, defined as the inability to obtain adequate amounts of nutritious food to sustain an active and healthy life with dignity.
The stories the media has been reporting recently aptly illustrate the hunger crisis gripping the world. While there have been food riots or protests in more than 30 countries, we have not yet seen the full extent of the crisis. It is clear, however, that our government’s and other nations’ response has not been equal to the scale of the problem.
In the Bible, God talks more about helping the poor and hungry than any other topic. Adopting a biblical understanding of oppression and injustice as the causes of poverty will lead to radically different courses of action on the part of churches and individuals.
It requires us to work toward significant changes in the legal and economic systems that perpetuate an underclass.
We in Tennessee can be thankful for our nation’s efforts on behalf of the world’s poor and hungry people — such as increasing agricultural food yields, eradicating smallpox, and getting closer to wiping out polio. Twenty-nine million more children in sub-Saharan Africa are in school than a decade ago. The U.S. is providing HIV/AIDS treatment for approximately 1.45 million men, women and children worldwide.
Yet, we can do more with what we are giving by simply ensuring the aid is better-coordinated. U.S. global development programs are implemented by 12 departments,
25 different agencies and almost 60 government offices. This convoluted system is ill-equipped to deal with the hunger crisis affecting at least 36 countries.
Congress urged to act
A solution to this problem, the Global Poverty Act, has been passed by the House of Representatives and awaits a full Senate vote. It gives backbone to the commitment we made in 2000, along with more than 150 countries, to halve the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015. We are now at the halfway mark, and we Christians, along with all people of goodwill, need to work to strengthen our government’s resolve and remind ourselves of the promises we made to the world’s poor and hungry people.
With the legislative session set to close this year on Sept. 26, our senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, have not joined the 24 Republican and Democratic co-sponsors of the Global Poverty Act. Now is the time for them to act to make the Global Poverty Act a law of the land.
Todd L. Lake is vice president for spiritual development at Belmont University.
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Headlines: August, 2008; Peace Corps Paraguay; Directory of Paraguay RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Paraguay RPCVs; Hunger
When this story was posted in August 2008, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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| Dodd vows to filibuster Surveillance Act Senator Chris Dodd vowed to filibuster the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that helped this administration violate the civil liberties of Americans. "It is time to say: No more. No more trampling on our Constitution. No more excusing those who violate the rule of law. These are fundamental, basic, eternal principles. They have been around, some of them, for as long as the Magna Carta. They are enduring. What they are not is temporary. And what we do not do in a time where our country is at risk is abandon them." |
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Story Source: The Tennessean
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Paraguay; Hunger
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