ONE Blog
Why we need to invest in women farmers in Africa
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This piece was originally published on ONE’s Africa blog. “Because this continent is not only going to feed itself, we have to feed the world” As today is World Food Day, it is an appropriate time to recognise and appreciate the importance of Africa’s principals food producers; women farmers. Roughly 70% of small holder farmers in Africa are women, and therefore it is unsurprising that they are the principal food producers, yet Africa is a victim of substantial food insecurity. |
What We’re Reading: World Food Day Edition
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CNN: We must end the obscenity of hunger – Around the world, 170 million children under the age of five are stunted, meaning their bodies and brains cannot, and will not develop to full capacity, making that child four times more likely to die from preventable disease. Now more than ever, our help is needed. (Mia Farrow) UN: At meeting on food security, UN says goal for reducing world’s hungry by half still reachable – The deadline for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals is looming, but hope is still afoot. Important progress, such as cutting the number of hungry people in the world by 132 million in the past two decades, is proof that our goals are reachable. But beyond the 2015 deadline, the UN is quick to remind that the only acceptable number when it comes to eradicating hunger, is “zero.” Deseret: How food security impacts women in the developing world – “Hunger isn’t about too many people and too little food. Hunger Is about inequality. And women and girls face the greatest inequalities of all,” says Sarah Kalloch. Even while the majority of the world’s food is grown by women, vast inequalities in resources and power still lead to their widespread hunger and poverty. (Mercedes White) |
Claude, the 9-foot, mustachioed sweet potato
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Meet Claude. He graduated from Georgetown with a double major in agriculture and government, and he’s interning at Congressman Rick’s office in Washington this semester. All Claude wants to do is get the Congressman to read his big plan on nutrition, but he can’t get the time of day from him. Maybe it’s because Claude is a 9-foot sweet potato… with a giant mustache! ONE teamed up with comedy group Funny or Die (we’ve worked with them in the past… remember our AIDS video with Zach Galifianakis?) to create a short film about Claude’s struggle to put global child nutrition on the political agenda. Although (spoiler alert!) Claude never quite gets his plan in front of the Congressman, he has faith that activists and comedy-lovers like you will take action with ONE to make his dreams come true. |
Where every day is World Food Day
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Today is World Food Day. But, I wonder, do the farmers of Africa know it? Actually, for them, every day is World Food Day. Food – growing it, scraping together enough money to buy it – is their daily preoccupation, a primal obsession. Africa’s smallholder farmers – the most common occupation on the continent – rise every day to tend their plots, trying to squeeze enough out of the soil to feed their families throughout the year. Most of the time, they fail, which is why they endure an annual Hunger Season.
When their cupboards are bare, they scramble for income to purchase food on the market. There, prices march relentlessly higher as surpluses from the previous harvest dwindle. The farmers may have to save their earnings for a couple of days before there is enough to buy a meal for the family. |
Answers from Ethiopia: Responses to your questions
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ONE Mom Blogger and Parent Hacks founder Asha Dornfest traveled to Ethiopia with ONE this October. This blog post is part of our ongoing coverage of the trip. This piece was originally published on her Babble column Accidental Expert. A week before I left for Ethiopia with ONEMoms, I spoke to a thoughtful, engaged group of women at the Blogalicious Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. This event, founded by Stacey Ferguson of Justice Fergie, was full of energy and expertise. Blogalicious attendees have big plans for their blogs, and understand the importance of community. The conversation happened at the ONEMoms poolside chat, an hour-long break that took place in a cabana by the pool at the Red Rock Resort. Jyl Johnson Pattee, one of the original ONEMoms team that went to Kenya last year, and I answered questions about ONEMoms: what the program is, why ONE is so committed to the community of mothers in social media, at what ONE is all about. We also wanted to find out if anyone had questions for the people we’d be meeting in Ethiopia the following week. The questions (and the women who asked them) were so thoughtful and diverse, I’d like to share them here, along with the answers I got: (more…) |
Soul-Pulling Dancing in Ethiopia
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ONE Mom Blogger Kelly Wickham traveled to Ethiopia with ONE last week. This piece, originally published on Mocha Momma, is part of our ongoing coverage of the trip. For once, I’m grateful that the SoundCloud failed me because I couldn’t make it through one long enough to speak clearly without incoherent babbling from Ethiopia. You would think I was speaking to you in Amharic if I actually tried to speak it out. Instead, I have been working on how to describe something to you about my trip to Ethiopia: the dancing.
Photo caption: Maya Haile Samuelsson But first, a word about new friendships. I was given a lot of advice about traveling with a group of people on a journey like the one from which I just returned. Everyone who said that our group would forever be special and bonded in a unique way was right. There was something incredible about keeping track of that many women, checking in on one another, and making sure everyone was on the bus or at a meal. Calls of “Where’s Asha?” and “Has anyone seen Liz?” and “Does anyone know if Rana is coming or is she on the bus already?” and “Is Diana feeling okay?” were commonplace. The amount of care we took of each other paled in comparison to how concerned we were for all the people we met at schools and clinics and on farms. Those faces, forever ingrained in my brain, will make me wonder how they’re doing twenty years from now when I think of them. |
World Food Day action: Tell Hillary Clinton to put agriculture on the agenda
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For the past few weeks, ONE has been on a sweet potato kick. We’ve asked you to submit delicious sweet potato recipes to our Tumblr blog, post sweet potato pics onto Instagram using the hashtag #recipe4change, and we’ve featured our little sweet potato character all over our website and our “nutrition petition” — a petition signed now by almost 140,000 members worldwide. Now, we’re at the zenith of our campaign. Tuesday is World Food Day (Oct 16), it’s a big, symbolic day to show US leaders that we’re serious about fighting chronic malnutrition. And we need everyone to turn out and help put the heat on world leaders to put nutrition on the agenda.
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From Our Partners
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Preventing blindness and saving lives with vitamin A
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How empowering mothers is a simple solution to malnutrition
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