Despite there being enough food to feed everyone, deadly malnutrition claims the lives of some three million children every year.
The good news is that for the first time in history, game changing solutions are within our reach. The global hunger scandal is completely preventable. Using ready-to-use therapeutic foods, we can now treat children at home and save lives at a scale never before imagined.
But whilst ending child deaths from acute malnutrition is one of the great moral imperatives of our time, it also is one of the best investments we can make to reduce global poverty. According to medical journal The Lancet, malnourished children are less likely to go to school, less likely to stay there, and more likely to struggle academically. This in turn hampers their physical capacity to perform work as well as their future earning ability.
Eminent Copenhagen Consensus 2012 experts calculated that each dollar spent reducing chronic undernutrition has more than a $30-pay-off as the right nutrition in the first stages of life has a profound impact on a child’s ability to grow, learn and rise out of poverty.
Action Against Hunger has been fighting childhood malnutrition and helping communities become self-sufficient for over 30 years, ensuring that children have access to the nutrition they need to develop and fulfil their potential.
But much more needs to be done. And this is why we’d like you to be involved in the next step against global child hunger. Action Against Hunger has committed itself to saving the lives of at least 600,000 severely acute malnourished children by 2020. We also aim to improve the nutrition status and environment of six million children and women with nutrition-relevant programmes.
And we need your support to meet this target.
Your company can be part of the solution
Over the past 15 years, Action Against Hunger and other aid agencies have been working with the food industry around the world to take action against child hunger.
From top restaurants to Michelin-starred and high profile celebrity chefs, from up-and-coming food producers and food service providers, there are many ways for companies to get involved and help provide children with healthier futures.
Our partners see the synergy between the food many of us enjoy and the work that Action Against Hunger does with people around the world who do not have sufficient food. They also share our goal of promoting positive happy futures for children, families and communities worldwide.
Fighting childhood malnutrition is one of the smartest investments the world can make in the fight against poverty. To find out just how access to food and nutrition can transform the lives of whole communities and how to get involved, visit actionagainsthunger.org.uk.
Christine Kahmann is communications manager at Action Against Hunger
