Green Options

There are starving children all over the world. As a parent, I am not above reminding my children of this when they complain about their full plates of food or daily snacks. To which they have been known to respond, “well, send it to Africa then.”

One man is doing just that. Richard Proudfit is a retiree from Minnesota and he is a man with a mission. Proudfit founded Kids Against Hunger, an organization that is bringing 40 million meals to starving children around the world.

The meals consist of 52% soy protein, 6 vegetables, flavoring and 22 vitamins/minerals. It is a simple, dehydrated food that is highly nutritious and can help reverse the effects of starvation. The main ingredients are rice, soy beans, vegetables and vitamins. It took a team of food scientists three years to find the right formulation of food for these malnourished children.

Proudfit says, “God has called me to feed starving children” and has also said that he won’t retire from this job until all the world’s starving children are fed. He has been helping fulfill that calling since 1999 with Kids Against Hunger.

I work in a school district where over 75% of the children are on the free and reduced lunch program. To be eligible for such a program, family income must fall below 130 percent of the Federal poverty guidelines for free meals, or family income must fall between 130 and at or below 185 percent of the Federal poverty guidelines for a reduced price meal.  The current Federal Poverty Guideline is $21,200 for a family of four.  Most of the children on this program eat both breakfast and lunch at school. Unfortunately, the nutritional quality of these meals is poor, as they are packed with processed foods.

Malnutrition is usually a consequence of poverty. Farm to School programs have the ability to combat this negative effect of poverty by providing children two healthy meals a day from a local farm:

When the World Food Program (WFP) introduced free breakfasts to public schools in impoverished communities around the world, teachers immediately noticed a difference in their classrooms. Not only were students more alert and focused, they attended more regularly and were never late so as not to miss breakfast time. The quality of the students changed, but so did the quantity. The percentage of female students - most likely to be forced to stay behind to help earn income - sky-rocketed and the age of attendance fell. Four year olds began to attend school with their older siblings, sitting obediently in classes just for a free bowl of rice in the morning. In many impoverished families, children are forced to earn their keep in place of going to school. In addition to eradicating hunger, WFP made school attendance a central part of their goal for the breakfast program.

The WFP school feeding program has become a touchstone aspect of both the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the G8 action pact of 2002. Between the program’s inception in 1999 and its last data recorded in 2005, the number of children served has grown by 82%, which amounts to 21.7 million schoolchildren in 74 countries.

Now, despite its success and widespread acclaim, the International Herald is reporting that the WFP program will not continue in Cambodia - the first of many predicted shut-downs as rising food costs threaten the profoundly poor.