This is Our Moment
By Laura Simmonds, Campaign Officer, World Vision UK.
Summer’s a-coming and it’s that time of year when my mind turns to food. More to the point, how much food I’ve eaten over the winter and how not-good I’m going to look on my beautiful beach holiday.
So inevitably, the dieting books have come out. Carol Vorderman’s 28 Day Detox – effective but hardcore. The Low GI Diet – no calorie counting but then again no chocolate. Or just straight up Weight Watchers – the points system eliminating any need for mental arithmetic.
But a hint of guilt threads through my plans to stir fry my way into beachwear.
At the minute I’m working on Enough Food IF – a campaign calling on people all over the UK to join together and ask global leaders (gathering in the UK for the G8 in June) to make choices that will reduce the number of families and children who go to bed hungry.
I have a choice. I can eat pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want. My diet is constrained by very little – other than what I choose to put in my mouth.
Mums, dads and children all over the world don’t have that luxury. At its most extreme, their lack of choice has grave consequences – malnutrition and death.
All too often I feel like this is clichéd, which makes me sad. We – I – forget “the Hungry” are real people.
But Enough Food IF has inspired me. On Saturday 8th June thousands of people from all around the UK are coming to Hyde Park in London. They’re coming because they are choosing not to detach themselves from the men, women and children living with hunger every day. They are choosing to care about the 2 million children who die from hunger each year – deaths that are preventable IF our world leaders take decisions to make our food systems fairer.
To quote Bill Nighy at the IF launch,
“We are electing not to forget. We are choosing to care. And we are standing on the shoulders of all those campaigning giants who questioned the status quo – from the people who fought to abolish slavery, to the anti-apartheid movement, to the Jubilee 2000 Debt campaign to Make Poverty History – all who have shown that when we fight for what’s right, we can win.”
This is our moment.
This year, while the UK hosts the G8, we can make a difference.
The road to ending hunger is long and complex but IF we seize this moment, IF we act now, IF we choose not to detach ourselves, we can make 2013 the beginning of the end for global hunger.
Please join us at the Big IF London or IF Church Service on Saturday 8th June.
Share your voice!
If you want to know more about the Enough Food IF campaign, you can visit our website or click over to our Facebook page. Sign up, join in and share your voice, because we know there’s enough food for everyone if we share.