Make a Donation to Fight Hunger
At Al Dente, we're among the planet's luckiest. We have more than enough food to fill our bellies and we have the luxury to be discriminating about what we eat. Others across the globe don't have this luxury.
Fellow foodies, if you were grateful for the bounty of food on your plate this holiday season, I would encourage you to think about making a donation to a hunger-related charity. If you're looking for somewhere to start, here's a list of charities that could use your donation:
Share Our Strength: Since 1984, Share Our Strength has led the fight against hunger and poverty by inspiring and organizing individuals and businesses to share their strengths.
Care: CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. They place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.
World Food Program: FightHunger.org aims to end child hunger by 2015. They aim to do this by holding an annual worldwide demonstration across the globe called Walk the World. Once a year hundreds of thousands of people in every time zone will take to the streets to call for an end to the needless suffering of hungry children.
Chefs for Humanity: Chefs for Humanity is an alliance of culinary professionals and educators working
in partnership with U.S. and global organizations, providing nutrition education, hunger relief, and emergency and humanitarian aid to reduce hunger across the world.
Oxfam America: Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. Together with individuals and local groups in more than 120 countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice. They are an affiliate of Oxfam International.
Action Against Hunger: The mission of Action Against Hunger is to save lives by eliminating hunger through the prevention, detection, and treatment of malnutrition, especially during and after emergency situations of conflict, war and natural disaster. From crisis to sustainability, they tackle the underlying causes of malnutrition and its effects by using their expertise in nutrition, food security, water and sanitation, health and advocacy.
Ultimately, you'll have to choose which charity best fits your philanthropic needs. Or, if you have a local or international charity that you have worked with but I have missed above, please feel free to leave us a comment and list it below.
--Sous-Chef-on-the-Run
PS. As an added incentive, if you make a donation before December 31, your donation will be tax deductible for 2007.
domeinregistratie on December 26, 2007 at 11:58 AM
I really appreciate your work. We should contribute to charities as much as possible to remove hunger and poverty from this world.
Best of luck with your quest. :-)
Florence Graving on December 26, 2007 at 01:33 PM
What percentage of the monies donated goes for "administrative expenses"????
I know of one charity that keeps 84% of moneies donated for "administrative expenses".
Another of these charities had a chairman who gave the money to Saddam Hussein in exchange for oil. Of course he was an Oil Baron. Govt. indicted him and he got a !3 million dollar fine (peanuts to him) and a year in jail which is now being sliced into probably 3 mos.
I really fear that the most of the monies donated are never used to buy food for these charities and are kept by The Administrators.
rahcc on December 27, 2007 at 10:36 AM
You forgot the most efficient and one of the longer-established in the field, Second Harvest. Each services it's local community; check your local directory or websearch Second Harvest to find the address for your local food bank.
rahcc on December 27, 2007 at 10:37 AM
You forgot the most efficient and one of the longer-established in the field, Second Harvest. Each services it's local community; check your local directory or websearch Second Harvest to find the address for your local food bank.
Ann on December 27, 2007 at 10:58 AM
I like to give to World Vision (www.worldvision.org). They are a humanitarian organization that helps people all over the world. In addition to disaster relief, they help communities become self-sustaining, so that people can support themselves in the future.
N. Smith on December 28, 2007 at 10:04 AM
According to a program on PBS, Doctors without Borders has developed a product called Plumpie Nut (sp) that is being used to bring children back from starvation. This food stuff is relatively inexpensive to make, but is helping to make great strides in what is otherwise a tragic condition for many children. They may even have a short video regarding this on their website at PBS. Not only are they helping with hunger issues around the world, but Doctors without Borders are on the frontline with other humanitarian health issues...for what it is worth! Personally, my husband and I believe they are a charity that is worth supporting.
San on December 29, 2007 at 11:59 AM
Isn't it an irony to have a picture of a 'piece of chicken' in a post which talks about 'World Hunger'?? I am not sure if the author is aware that the pervasive consumption of meat and it's related devil - the meat industry' is the leading cause of hunger in this world.
James Phelan on January 02, 2008 at 07:04 AM
Great to see posts like this as there are tons of great NGOs carrying out important work...
A quick clarification for you: Doctors Without Borders did not develop the Plumpy'nut referenced above by N. Smith. Their field programs were indeed featured in the PBS program, but not for developing this remarkable nutritional product... rather for using it, as it's used by a number of agencies focused on malnutrition.
There's a bit more background on nutritional products like Plumpy'Nut here:
"Expanding the Ready-to-Eat Revolution: New Tools Target Malnutrition"
http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/pressroom/press_releases/target_malnutrition.html
Best to you all!
-James