Friday's Charity: Hunger Pains

It's not Friday anymore, but my computer at work more likely than not has a gross virus on it (Let me just say, I HATE TECHNOLOGY. Sometimes.) I usually work on my blog during the day and fine tune it and post it during the down time at work when we're waiting for the first editions of the paper to print. But better late than never and I don't think anyone was constantly refreshing their browsers to see if I updated this tonight.

This 'Friday's' charities are about food. Food is obviously one of the fundamental needs of all living creatures, and here in America we certainly like our food. But man is it expensive. I can't go to the grocery store without spending at least $20-$30 bucks, buying non-name brand food and feeding one mouth. So I can't imagine how hard it is to feed a family when you have very little money.

The two charities I will write about both help feed those in third world countries. Many of the charities I'm going to write about will most likely be international -- though this doesn't mean I don't believe in helping those in my own country but sometimes people in other countries need the help more. (I'll touch on this in another post)

The Hunger Project
It is global, non-profit organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. Working in 13 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to develop effective bottom-up strategies to end hunger and poverty.

What I like about this group, and World Neighbors which is very similar, is it's mission. Donating food and money to people is just fine, but that will never in itself solve world hunger. What these two organization do is both help feed people in third world nations and teach them how to feed themselves. They teach people how to plant and nurture crops, they teach people to work together and mobilize, foster government accountability and go further than just addressing malnutrition but illnesses like AIDS/HIV as well. They also both have programs to empower and strengthen women's presence in the communities.

World Neighbors also invests in people and their communities by training them to create their own life-changing solutions through programs in agriculture, literacy, water, health and environmental protection.

I also love charities that have multifaceted ways to volunteer and help.

For The Hunger Project you can donate, make a pledged to raise a certain amount, host an event to raise money, volunteer and work for the charity, travel with them (if you donate a lot of money, though) or just support the business partners they show on their Web site.

World Neighbors also allows you to volunteer, donate and host events for them. They also host events (there's one in Oklahoma City in October) where they raise proceeds for the charity, they even say just getting information about the charity out into the world help (like writing a blog post about it!) Also, WN has an initiative called WOW! (Work of Women) which raises awareness about the issues women in poor, rural communities face and works to do something about these problems, so a person could also help out with that. They also have an Adopt-A-Village program and even has a service for converting an extra car, truck, or RV into a tax deductible donation benefiting World Neighbors. (Fred, this may be your future).

Lastly, one of the best fundraising ideas most sites have are penny programs. Just think about it, you get a big group of friends (or members of clubs, organizations or co-workers) to save up all their pennies for a couple months, let's say each person saves 1o pennies a week for four months. That's only about $1.60. But if you get about 25 people to do this, that's $40 you could donate to a charity -- and it would only cost each person a 1.60 and I'm betting some would be willing to donate much more than that.

Oh, and RIP Walter Cronkite. "Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened. "