How would you feel going to bed hungry?
Most of us (at least in my circle) is grown up with food on the table everyday and never need to suffer from hunger. We go to bed with filled stomachs and food in our house. We have never experienced real hunger. I am born and raised in one of the worlds wealthiest countries where we always have access to the worlds best resources on many levels. I feel blessed. However, we do not choose in what country or life we are born. Some are not so lucky as I am (Yes I will call myself lucky).
In some part of the world, people have a daily fight to feed themselves and their families. A warm dinner and breakfast everyday is never an of course. “The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016. Almost all the hungry people, 780 million, live in developing countries, representing 12.9 percent, or one in eight, of the population of developing counties’ These numbers are high.
It can be frustrating sometimes to hear these numbers and you do not know what to do about it. I for example, feel it is bad and unfair that some people have to have this life, when I have everything I need. Why does so many people have some much when others have nothing?
I can not decide where I come from, but I can decide that I want to use my position to help the ones I can. It has always been a natural part of me to help others and I have always been active in charity organizations in Norway, but also here in New York. If you are walking the streets here, you are seeing homeless and hungry people in almost every street corner. It hurts to see that and you are asking yourself, what happened? Why is these people here and it is people from all over there world here. Not only New Yorkers. Looking at some statistics:
- In August 2017, there were 61,471 homeless people, including 15,315 homeless families with 22,970 homeless children, sleeping each night in the New York City municipal shelter system. Families comprise just over three-quarters of the homeless shelter population.
- Over the course of City fiscal year 2016, more than 129,803 different homeless men, women, and children slept in the New York City municipal shelter system. This includes over 45,000 different homeless New York City children.
Many of them have had bad experiences in life, been in war or are just born into this life. Somebody may say they choose this life because of drugs, but I do not believe anyone would choose that life. And in the end they are humans, and they deserves to eat and go to bed (or at least to sleep, cause many of them don’t have a bed either) with a filled stomach. We are so many peoples here in NYC that can share a little of what we have and from our time to make the life a little better for those people.
I am going to volunteer for The Holy Apostle Soup Kitchen today. We are going to serve a meal to approximately 1000 people poor, hungry and homeless people. I have done this with them before and I can not wait to see how much that one meal, means for the people that come. It is time to make a difference.
New Blog post about this very soon. In the meanwhile, appreciate what you have and don’t take that for granted! Someone would give the world to have what you have.
Love,
Rebecca