There’s a meme of a woman looking inside her refrigerator and commiserating, “There’s no food. Just ingredients to make food.” That lady may not be happy with her meal options, but it’s safe to say she is food secure. She doesn’t struggle with ongoing hunger.
The Basics of Food Security
Are you familiar with the term food security? “Food security is built on four pillars: food availability, food access, food use, and food stability.” [1] If you are food secure, you consistently have enough food to live a healthy life. On the flip side, if you are food insecure, you lack the resources to eat nutritious food regularly.
Experts have called 2022 the year of “unprecedented hunger.” “As many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night. The number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared—from 135 million to 345 million—since 2019. A total of 49 million people in 49 countries are teetering on the edge of famine.” [2]
Current events like war, inflation, and drought have led to devastating global outcomes. The headlines below represent a small sample of the stories of hunger making the news.
Phosphorus supply is increasingly disrupted – we are sleepwalking into a global food crisis
Why farmers in northern Ghana go to bed hungry
Somalis Are Dying of Hunger. Officials Say It’s Not a Famine. Why?
Solving the Food Crisis
Headlines like these have become all too common. And it’s true, we can’t solve the food crisis alone. But doing nothing should never be an option!
Bright Hope works in communities that were plagued by famine and hunger even before recent events. So in a sense, we are a step ahead in that we’ve got programs in place to combat the rising threat of food insecurity. Joseph, a pastor in Uganda, tells his story about how Bright Hope’s programs transformed his family from nearly starving every year to having everything they need.
Joseph recalled: “In all my years as a pastor, I had never come across a church-based program that gave me hope as a family man. Bright Hope’s programs have changed the way I think and act towards making my family self-sustainable.”
Pastor Joseph grows cabbage, corn, potatoes, and sometimes rice. He attributes his hard work ethic to what he learned in Bright Hope’s enrichment programs, where he learned the need for self-sufficiency.
Joseph’s Battle Against Hunger
Joseph shared: “As a family man, I found it hard to feed my family. Many times, we had to starve during the dry season. We never stored anything for that period. But after all the training we got, I began storing food, especially corn. During the COVID lockdown, my family never lacked food at any time. We had all we needed.”
Joseph continued: “Although I am advanced in age, I have found a new passion in growing corn and cabbage. These crops provide a lot of hope for my family. We are food secure. Out of my nine children, four are still in school and this is where their school fees come from. It is also a source of income for my home. While many in the community are struggling with rising food and other commodity prices, I have food at home.”
Joseph concluded: “Bright Hope has really opened our eyes to see that we have to serve our communities through the gospel and practical living. We now have a bigger responsibility to lead them both spiritually and physically.“
2022 may have been a year of unprecedented hunger, but together we can make 2023 a year of unparalleled generosity! Give a gift to Bright Hope and support the programs that change how the poor think about self-sufficiency and give them to tools to achieve sustainability.
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[1] https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/media-centre/blog/10-facts-about-food-security/
[2] https://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis
