An alternative Mother's Day gift
- May 1, 2009 7:07 AM |
- By Tara Kimura
By Tara Kimura, CBCNews.ca
Looking for a unique Mother's Day gift? The United Nations' World Food Programme has launched its Wall Against Hunger website through which donors can make a pledge in honour of their mom or loved one.
Donations are used to feed school children in developing nations. The UN notes the great majority of the WFP's recipients are women and children. Of the 580 million people deemed chronically hungry, 60 per cent are women, according to the UN.
Over the past year, the WFP has called for more aid, saying it is struggling to meet the rising needs of people in developing and war-ravaged countries. For example in February, WFP workers warned of an imminent crisis as they were blocked from delivering food to 250,000 civilians caught in Sri Lanka's war zone.
Rising food prices and drought in Kenya prompted the WFP in January to warn of the possibility of mass starvation. The UN also said it was shrinking rations in Zimbabwe, as the number of WFP recipients in the area surged from two million people in October to four million in November.
Find more on the World Food Programme – including a news story detailing how a Canadian warship escorted a WFP ship to Somalia and a story on the much-scrutinized UN food summit – here.
About the Authors
- Elizabeth Bridge is a producer with CBC's Digital Archives project. She got her start in the kitchen baking brownies and making fudge but is still trying to get pastry right.
- Andrea Chiu
is an associate producer at CBC Radio Digital. Though she loves to eat, cook and discuss food,
don't ask her to bake. It never turns out well. She tweets as @TOfoodie on Twitter and organizes food and wine events in Toronto called FoodieMeet.
- Amber Hildebrandt
works for CBCNews.ca in Toronto. Growing up on a farm in Manitoba, she acquired an insatiable appetite, but it was during a stint in Japan that she developed her discerning tastebuds and foodie ways.
- Tara Kimura
is a multimedia producer for CBCNews.ca.
- Andree Lau
is a CBC web reporter in Calgary. Her journalism career includes seven years as a CBC-TV reporter. Her own blog called "are you gonna eat that?" chronicles her eating adventures (including sampling snake and camel hoof tendon).
- Jessica Wong
is a CBCNews.ca writer who loves to eat and cook, as well as discuss, read and watch programming about food, sometimes all at once.
- Kevin Yarr
, CBCNews.ca's writer in Prince Edward Island, wrote about food and beer for national and regional magazines before joining the CBC. He acquired a desire for new tastes on his first trip to Europe, and an appreciation of eating locally and in season when he finally settled down on P.E.I.
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