|
 |
Press Releases & Information
For The Media
|
|
ISSUED:
10.01.2001 |
|
|
UWI Students Observe World Food Day.
"Fight Hunger To Reduce Poverty" is the theme for this year's World Food Day - a day observed throughout the world on October 16th. Approximately eight hundred million men, women and children are chronically hungry. Hunger causes illness and death, robs people of their potential to work and cripples children's learning capacity. It also undermines the peace and prosperity of nations and traps individuals in a vicious cycle of poor nutrition, ill health and diminished capacity for learning and work that is passed on from one generation to the next. Above all, it is a fundamental violation of the right to food.
UWIAID - Solutions For Hunger is a student run club at The University Of The West Indies, which aims to educate students about hunger and poverty in Trinidad & Tobago. The club will be observing World Food Day with a number of activities during the month of October.
From October 8th to the 12th, the club will be holding a display at UWI's Main Library highlighting World Food Day and the work of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). On Monday October 15th, the club will be hosting a special guest lecture for students at the campus coffee-shop, Veg-Out Café, about Strategies For Combating Poverty In Trinidad & Tobago. These activities will culminate on Saturday October 20th, with a visit to a local orphanage, where members of the club will feed and spend time with the children.
The club's annual Christmas food-drive is scheduled for November 19th to the 23rd, 2001 and students staff and members of the public are asked to contribute non-perishable items, such as tinned or canned food, rice, flour, pasta, powdered milk and sugar. UWIAID will also be holding a grand charity concert in March 2002, in association with another campus-based group, MADOC.
Unfortunately, most poverty reduction strategies fail to specifically target hunger. Policy makers long assumed that if income levels rose and economies grew, the benefits would trickle down to the hungry. But this has not proved to be an effective strategy. To make progress in the fight against hunger, governments, the private sector and the international community will need to focus their efforts in rural areas, where 70 percent of the poor and hungry live. This must include directing more investments to those regions. Raising people's awareness about the problems of hunger and food insecurity is also a vital step. World Food Day activities aim to heighten public understanding of hunger and strengthen solidarity in the struggle to make sure that everyone has enough to eat every day.
At the 1996 World Food Summit, world leaders committed themselves to cutting by half the number of hungry people by 2015. In November 2001 the FAO will host the World Food Summit: five years later as a forum for governments, NGOs, other UN agencies and lending institutions to review the progress made and consider ways to accelerate efforts to reach this goal. This year's World Food Day will provide an additional opportunity to raise awareness about the issues to be addressed at the conference.
For more information about UWIAID and its activities, please visit the club's website at http://www.uwiaid.cjb.net.
<< back
to press releases
|
|
|
We want to hear from you.
Send us your feedback. |
| 
|
|
