Chapter 6
Ending Hunger
Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment,
poverty are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes
greater than the illustrious heroes.
--Victor Hugo
While itís not altogether clear what it takes to cause an
ideaís time to come, finding out is sufficiently important for us to look
further into the matter. Letís examine a major social problem that may
shed some light on the role of individuals and organizations in bringing
about a profound social change. Weíll examine the issue of world hunger.
I want to begin by quoting at length from a rather unusual letter I received
the other day.
Dear Earl and Sheila:
We did it! At 8 A.M., a week ago Sunday (February 5),
I went to the starting line of the Oakland marathon with your pledge of
$100.00 plus other pledges and matching funds totaling $41,000, a thousand
dollars over our goal!
Unfortunately, however, this marked the completion of
only the first step. Next was the marathon itself. The week before I injured
a muscle in my left calf so badly I had to take a taxi home from the Golden
Gate Bridge. I was hoping a week with no running would allow it to heal
sufficiently to take me 26.2 miles.
Not soÖafter the first two miles my leg was hurting so
badly I had to start walking. My running partneróJim Ray (58 years old!)
offered to run it on my behalf. I agreed and told him Iíd walk the half-marathon
and meet him at the finish (I figured 8-10 hours to walk the whole marathon,
which I did not want to do).
He took offóI kept walking. This got boring pretty fast.
So I found a running pace (slow) and a posture (body straight upright,
not leaning forward) that didnít hurt too badly, and I started running
again. I was sure my muscle, even under these running conditions, wouldnít
last too longóso I asked a race official to take my number on up to Jim
so he could carry it with him, figuring at the minimum my number should
complete the course even if I didnít.
Then I started writing the completion letter to you in
my head:
"Dear Earl and Sheila, Well, we raised $41,000 but I didnít
quite do the whole marathonÖI had this bad muscle, you see, andÖ"
As much as I rewrote it, a certain quality of inspiration
was somehow lacking. Before I knew it, I had missed the half-marathon turn-off
and was at the 13-mile point for the full marathon. Plus, the race official
brought my number back because he couldnít find Jim! The only way out was
to complete the entire course!
Which I didóhappily, albeit painfully. Other than at the
beginning, I never had to walkóthe letter I wrote during the second half
was far better than the first. The whole thing took 4 hours and 20 minutes
(another personal recordófor the longest time!), with dozens of Hunger
Project volunteers, World Runners and friends cheering me at the finish
as though I had just broken a world record.
Gordon Starr is one of the heroes who will end world hunger,
and his story can shed light
on what it takes to cause an ideaís time to come. Several
years ago, Gordon committed himself to run a marathon every year until
hunger is ended on the planet, asking people to pledge money to that end
every time he runs. He says of the 1984 Oakland experience:
Something more than just running and contributing money
happened this year. There was an excitement, a partnership, an involvement
expressed that made me certain the condition of starvation doesnít stand
a chance to persist beyond the end of the century. Not with people like
this group going for its throat.
People Are Starving
While it is impossible to calculate such things precisely,
it is generally estimated that some 13 to 18 million people die as a consequence
of starvation worldwide each year. Strictly speaking, almost no one dies
of hunger per se; instead, people who are malnourished (lacking specific
nutrients) or chronically undernourished (lacking nutrients generally)
die of diseases and other conditions that you and I recover from. We catch
the measles and recover; others die. The same goes for colds, the flu,
diarrhea, and any number of other maladies. What merely represents discomfort
for you and me spells death for the hungry.
Itís difficult to communicate the magnitude of world hunger.
Itís simply too horrible for most people to confront. Deaths due to hunger
average out to over forty thousand a day! Recall the last time you saw
a newspaper headline that proclaimed TWO HUNDRED KILLED IN AIRLINE CRASH
in two-inch letters, or 2,000 FEARED DEAD IN EARTHQUAKE. Anything that
kills hundreds of people, certainly anything that kills thousands, is worth
stopping the presses for. And yet over forty thousand die of hunger every
day. That works out to about twenty-eight every minute of every day throughout
the year, and three-fourths of them are children.
Today, we are horrified to recall (or to first learn)
that the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 killed 125,000 people.
And yet, hunger kills that many people every three daysóall through the
year, every year. In 1976, an earthquake in Chinaóthe worst in modern historyókilled
242,000 people. That may people die of hunger every six days.
Hunger simply dwarfs the other causes of death that concern
us. Wars canít compare. Highway deaths are trivial in comparison with hunger.
Murders are a drop in the bucket.
Given the magnitude of the insult that hunger is to the
human race, why do we let it persist? Hereís the beginning of an answer.
One night in 1976, I happened to watch a TV documentary
on world hunger with Aaron, who was seven at the time. It was pretty grim
and depressing, filled with skin-and-bones children. Iím not sure why we
started watching it, but we both got hooked on it. The more we watched
it, the more moved both of us became. When the program ended, both of us
just sat quietly for awhile. Then Aaron came to me and solemnly announced,
"Daddy, Iíd like to skip dinner tonight and have you send my food to those
children who donít have anything to eat."
Aaronís reaction to the program was probably typical of
hundreds, even thousands of children that night. My reaction to him was
probably equally typical of parents. I told him his concern was really
beautiful and that I was proud of him. I told him his compassion for others
showed what a good person he was. Then, I began an unconscious process
of "cooling out" my son. I pointed out to him that the problem was more
complicated than he thought. I told him it wouldnít work for me to send
his food through the mailó"I wouldnít know where to send it, and it wouldnít
keep anyway"óand I said it was more important for him to eat his dinner,
grow up strong, and then perhaps he would be able to do something about
the problem of starving children.
In the space of a few minutes, I had effectively convinced
Aaron that the problem of world hunger was too big and too complicated
for him to handle. In the process, I added weight to the view that he couldnít
really make a difference in the world. Itís still painful for me to think
back on that night, since it was such a perfect example of the process
that has kept starvation existing in the world for as long as we know.
Itís the same process that dampens heroism in the world more generally.
Enter The Hunger Project
My next contact with world hunger came in March 1977,
when I went to San Francisco for a meeting of the est Advisory Board. The
est training is a program of personal transformation created in 1971 by
Werner Erhard, and the Advisory Board was a group of some forty or fifty
people from various walks of life, who had taken the est training and who
met two or three times a year to advise Erhard on what est should be doing
in the world.
At the March 1977 meeting, Erhard announced that he had
been researching the problem of world hunger for several years and was
now ready to make a personal commitment to bringing it to an end. Although
he was still not clear as to what it would take to end hunger, he was committing
himself to doing whatever that might be. To add reality to his commitment,
he announced that he was creating an organization, called The Hunger Project,
in collaboration with composer-singer John Denver (an Advisory Board member)
and Dr. Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College and then director
of The est Foundation.
My own first reaction to the announcement was negative.
As a sociologist and as someone who had been deeply involved in the issue
of overpopulation, I felt certain that any attempt to end hunger would
result in disaster. It would surely result in even greater overpopulation,
producing even greater hunger in the long run. The commitment to end hunger
seemed naïve and ill-advised. I was concerned that some people I loved
and respected were about to look very stupid. And Iím sure I was worried
that Iíd look stupid association.
At the outset, Erhard laid out what he regarded as the
four major principles that needed to guide the end of hunger. First, The
Hunger Project was to be grounded in individual and personal responsibility.
Ending hunger could not be held as the task of government or of large corporations.
It needed to flow naturally from how individuals personally felt about
their planet.
If you have to keep people fired up, this project is a
joke. If this project isnít natural to your Self, this project is a fraud.
Second, Erhard spoke of the project as an "alignment of
wholes, not a sum of parts." By this, he meant that hunger could not be
ended by a mass of individuals, each of whom would agree to do his or her
part. Everyone involved in the project needed to be operating on the basis
of a total, personal commitment to getting the job done. The Hunger Project,
as a whole, would be the coming together of similarly committed individuals.
At the same time, ironically, no one would be able to take credit for ending
hunger. The desire to take credit, whether it appeared among individuals
in The Hunger Project or in its relationship with other anti-hunger organizations,
would be an obstacle to getting the job done.
Third, The Hunger Project was to focus more on context
than on content. In Erhardís own research into world hunger, he had concluded
that we already possessed everything we needed to know about the mechanics
of ending hunger. We didnít need new strains of rice or new methods for
storing or distributing food. Advances in these domains would be welcomed,
or course, but they would not be sufficient to end world hunger any more
than past developments had done so.
Erhard noted that there were already thousands of committed
individuals working through numerous organizations in the trenches of the
war on hunger. Whenever famines or similar disasters appeared on the planet,
organizations such as Oxfam, Catholic Relief Services, the American Friends
Service Committee, UNICEF, CARE, and many others sprang into action. Organizations
like Save the Children sought to provide continuing assistance to hungry
children everywhere. Others, like Bread for the World, engage in active
lobbying efforts to get legislation and other government action to relieve
the problem of hunger. The people involved in these organizations knew
what was needed, worked heroically, and made profound contributions to
people around the world. And yet, without broad public support, they were
fighting a holding action.
What was missing, Erhard concluded, was a global context
of commitment to use what tools we had and actually end hunger. For my
part, I recalled growing up during World War II and remembered how everyone
you met every day was deeply and personally concerned about the war and
how it was going. Then I recalled the Vietnam era, when Newsweek had a
regular weekly section on the war. I began to imagine what it would be
like if Newsweek had a weekly section addressing world hunger. What would
it be like if everyone you met was eager for news on how we were doing?
At about the same time The Hunger Project was being organized,
the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on their two-year, definitive
examination or world hunger, involving the efforts of some fifteen hundred
individuals and organizations. Their ultimate conclusion was that the world
now possessed everything it would take to end world hunger. All that was
lacking, they added, was the "political will" to get it done.
The final generating principle of The Hunger Project was
that of transformation. Erhard suggested that consciously and deliberately
ending world hunger would both require and produce a transformation in
the way human beings occupied their planet. If we were successful in joining
together to defeat one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, successful
in ending the misery of a billion human beings, we would never be the same
again. As a human race, we could not end hunger and then return to being
the hapless victims of "forces beyond our control." We could hardly hold
that the problems of poverty, injustice, war, and the like were too big
to be handled.
By the end of the meeting, I had committed myself, personally
and professionally, to the end of world hunger. The changes I went through
in my own mind with regard to the problem of world hunger had a powerful
impact on my sociological understanding of such problems and certainly
clarified my appreciation of the role to be played by individuals in solving
major social problems.
Can Hunger Really Be Ended?
In the most literal sense, there will never be a time
after which no human being will ever die for lack of food. There will always
be people who get lost in the desert and starve. There will always be isolated
individuals and groups who, unknown to the rest of us, are dying for lack
of food. Moreover, there will probably always be famine situations, known
to us at the time, in which people will starve before assistance arrives.
None of the above comments, however, invalidates the commitment
to an end of hunger on the planet. Nor does it mean that we can only hope
to make hunger less of a problem. None of those comments needs deny the
vision of an end to hunger as "an idea whose time has come." Hereís why
thatís so.
Today, we live in a global condition in which 13 to 18
million human beings die as a consequence of hunger every year. It is the
condition in which we live our lives, just as we live in a condition of
gravity. Everything we do occurs within and is a function of that condition.
Our experience of who we are is "conditioned" by the fact that over forty
thousand of us die of hunger every day. Those deaths are not exceptions
to some rule; they are part of it. The death by hunger of twenty-eight
people a minute is part of the routine of life on our planet at the present
time.
Consider this analogy. Many of the worldís cities exist
today in a condition of air pollution. Some days, the air is fairly clear;
other days it is terrible; but every day is lived in a condition of air
pollution.
Now suppose that all the worldís cities were to eliminate
the condition of air pollution. Imagine that we did everything it took
for all the ecological experts to agree that air pollution had been eliminated.
That would not mean there would never be any air pollution. Forest fires
and volcanic eruptions would, from time to time, pollute the air. Chemical
plants would explode now and then, causing air pollution. All such events
would be an exception to the condition of "no pollution," rather than a
part of a routine condition of pollution. Those exceptions would be worthy
of note in the worldís newspaper headlines.
Now, consider the analogy of airplane crashes. Although
there is some statistical average for the number of people who dies in
airplane accidents each year, we do not live in a condition of airplane
accidents. Whenever an airplane crashes, we regard that as a tragic exception,
not the rule. Those responsible for air safety undertake an immediate search
for answers and actions. When the cause of the accident is discovered,
steps are taken to insure that it wonít happen again: airplanes are redesigned,
air traffic control procedures are revised, pilot licensing is tightened
up. All this occurs because we live in a condition of no accidents.
When the condition of world hunger has been eliminated
on the planet, people will undoubtedly die for lack of food from time to
time, but their deaths will not be regarded as routine. They will be held
as tragedies. They will be tragically worthy of newspaper headlines and,
more important, they will be taken as a signal for concerted efforts to
insure that they are not repeated. People will be shocked. They will ask,
"How could that have happened?" and demand to know what can and is being
done to insure that it never happens again.
It is worth noting that the condition of no accidents
has made air travel safer and safer. Every airplane crash, in fact, contributes
to air safety. In a condition of no hunger, every death by hunger makes
future deaths less likely.
The shift from a condition of hunger-as-usual to one of
no hunger is an example of what it often called social transformation.
It is something far more profound than simple change, like the rise and
fall of interest rates or hemlines. Transformation represents a discontinuity
in the flow of things. It is as though the line fluctuating up and down
on the two-dimensional graph abruptly disappears and reappears on a different
graph, a four-dimensional one in fact.
Hereís a different example of what I mean by transformation
in this sense. Throughout the history of slavery in America, a body of
legislation and of court decisions kept changing the nature of black-white
relations, sometimes making slavery more severe, sometimes more lenient.
The Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery altogether, however,
represented transformation rather than mere change.
Often, great social transformations come in the form of
"an idea whose time has come." I want to spend the rest of this chapter
by looking at what it will take to bring about the end of world hunger
as an idea whose time has come. What will it take to bring about a global
transformation from a condition of hunger-as-usual to one of no hunger?
The Structure of Hungerís Persistence
Over the course of the past seven years, I have talked
about world hunger to a very wide range of groupsóliterally from kindergarten
classes to senior citizen clubs. The nature of those interactions has revealed
a great deal about the social-psychological structure of the persistence
of world hunger. I stress the "persistence" of hunger, since hunger itself
needs little or no explanation: people die as a consequence of hunger because
they donít have enough to eat. No mystery there. The question, rather,
is why we allow the condition of world hunger to persist.
Over the course of the past seven years, I suspect I have
heard every explanation there is for the persistence of hungeróand have
begun to grasp the structure that holds all those explanations together.
At the top of the structure, many people say they are unaware that hunger
is a major problem in the world today. They may recall Biblical reports
of famines in the distant past and even remember something about people
being hungry in Europe after World War II.
Interestingly, Iíve never had anyone argue with the assertion
that hunger is a massive problem in the world. Even those who say they
didnít know hunger was still a problem do not react to the news with disbelief.
Rather, they act as though they suspected it was true and didnít want to
know for sure.
Once people acknowledge that hunger is a major problem,
they begin offering explanations for its persistence. The first explanation
usually is that there simply isnít enough food for everyone. Hereís where
people put the blame on overpopulation, as I had done initially. Many people
have some vague recollection of Malthus saying that food production increased
arithmetically while population grew geometrically. Moreover, people point
out, India is a good example of a greatly over-populated country and one
that has a big problem of hunger. In fact, the fabled large welfare families
in this country would seem to fit into that pattern.
As compelling as this explanation is, it conflicts with
the hard, cold facts. This has been pointed out in numerous ways. For example,
during the past quarter-century, world food production has been increasing
faster than population growth. More to the point, the worldís current production
of grain alone equals three thousand caloriesí worth per person per day
worldwideóabout the number of calories consumed daily by Americans at the
present time. Remember, this is just the grain we produce. It doesnít take
account of other foodstuffsóvegetables, fruit, fish, etc.óand it ignores
the fact that many American farmers are actually being paid to hold back
on what they produce.
No matter how you cut it, the persistence of hunger on
the planet cannot be explained as a function of scarcity. Itís been estimated
that we produce enough food right now to feed 7 billion people. And yet,
of the worldís 4.6 billion inhabitants, about a billion go to bed hungry
every night. So how can that be?
Once people have acknowledged that scarcity is not the
cause of hungerís persistence, they have other explanations. (Itís ironic
that everyone seems to know why hunger persists. Almost nobody says, "People
are starving? How come?") Most of the explanations offered at this point
are logistical (e.g., too difficult to get food where the people are),
economic (e.g., people need money with which to grow or buy food), political
(e.g., corrupt officials divert the food), ideological (e.g., capitalism
is the problem), and so forth. These kinds of explanations are different
from the earlier ones.
Thereís often some truth in explanations like these. Food
distribution is often difficult. The problem of hunger is inextricable
from the economic systems within which it appears. Corrupt officials do
sometimes steal the food intended for the poor. Yet none of these kinds
of reasons is a sufficient explanation for the persistence of hunger in
the world. Perhaps the most powerful argument against this explanation
is the variety of conditions under which nations have ended hunger in the
past. To see this, we need to take a moment to consider how we would know
if hunger had been ended in a country.
For the experts in this field, the best indication of
whether hunger is a national problem is found in that nationís infant mortality
rate (IMR): the number of children per thousand who die during their first
year, as Iíve already discussed in chapter 1. Now obviously children die
of many causes, and even in the best caseóSwedenóseven out of every thousand
children die before reaching their first birthdays. Some IMRs are much
higher, however. Some African countries, as we saw earlier, have infant
mortality rates in excess of two hundred: more than one out of every five
children dies in its first year.
Very high infant mortality rates are recognized by the
experts as a good indication that hunger is a basic problem for that society.
The rule of thumbóadopted by UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and
many other researchers and organizationsóis that an IMR or fifty or more
indicates that hunger is a basic problem for a country. There are few nations
with IMRs in the vicinity of fifty, by the way: most are either substantially
below it or substantially above it, making a pretty clear distinction between
the haves and the have-nots.
During this century, some fifty-three nations with populations
of a million or more have reduced their infant mortality rates from above
fifty to below it, thus apparently ending hunger as a basic problem for
their people. Thirty-five have done so since World War II. Of particular
relevance to our present discussion, those nations have ended hunger in
a wide variety of ways. Some, like South Korea, have done so by emphasizing
agriculture, while agriculture has played little or no part in the achievement
in countries like Hong Kong, for example. Communist countries, like the
USSR, have ended hunger; so have liberal democracies like Costa Rica and
right-wing dictatorships like Chile. In Japan, the national government
played a central role in ending hunger; in Spain, by contrast, the government
was not very involved. In Taiwan, the family farm was the key to ending
hunger; in the Peopleís Republic of China, collective agriculture produced
the same result. Some countries have required massive foreign aid, others
have ended hunger without it. Some of the OPEC nations have ended hunger
as a consequence of becoming very rich, while other countriesóSri Lanka
is an exampleóhave ended hunger even while remaining very poor as a nation.
Ultimately, it comes down to this. Whatever reason may
be given for the persistence of hunger in the world, there is some country
that has solved the problem of hunger in spite of that reason. We need
to look elsewhere for the explanation for the persistence of hunger.
Growing Up and Becoming "Realistic"
One of the true joys in my life during the past seven
years has involved talking to young children about hunger. That doesnít
seem like a very joyous undertaking, I know, but it has provided me with
some of the most powerfully moving moments of my life.
Iíll always remember the first time I was asked to meet
with a kindergarten class in Honolulu shortly after The Hunger Project
was created. A friend who operated a large preschool had decided it was
important to let the children in her school know about the problem of world
hunger, as long as it was handled in a way that would support and empower
the children rather than simply making them feel bad. She asked me to meet
with one of her kindergarten classes.
I can still remember standing on the concrete walkway
outside the second-story classroom door, waiting to go in, still not sure
how to talk to really young kids about something as depressing as world
hunger. As I look back on it now, I can see that my main problem was that
I didnít really think there was much a kindergarten child could do about
world hunger.
When the time came, however, the door to the classroom
opened, and I had no choice. My friend invited me into the room and announced,
"All right boys and girls. This is Mr. Babbie, and heís going to talk with
us about something I know you will want to know about." With that, I was
treated to a series of shocks.
First, I had totally forgotten how small kindergarten
children were. The classroom consisted of about four fairly large tables
with about eight children sitting at each. But the tables seemed to be
no more than perhaps a foot off the floor, and the childrenís heads seemed
to reach about a foot and a half at most. I was seized by a real concern
that I would step on someone or trip and fall.
Second, I had not been prepared for the childrenís openness
and genuine love for this stranger who had stumbled into their midst. When
I was introduced, they all clapped their hands and cheered. Then they settled
back in a clearly excited anticipation. I was on.
In that first encounter with kindergarten children, I
discovered that I am naturally more of a Mister Rogers than a Captain Kangaroo.
I quickly found it possible to say things like "Hi, boys and girls" without
feeling foolish or trite, and found myself naturally emphasizing all the
appropriate emotions as I talked to them. "How would you like to play a
game?" I asked brightly, imagining a cartoon drawing of a light bulb going
on over my head. "Yay!" they all shouted in unison, squirming around in
their shrunken seats and glancing back and forth among themselves in excited
anticipation. And so we began our journey off to confront world hunger.
"I want you to imagine what you would do if you sat down
at the table to color, and you found the table covered with books," I started.
"What would you do?" About half the children shouted some version of "Move
the books." "Thatís right!" I replied, and we all cheered.
"Now suppose you wanted to dance around the floor, and
the chairs were in your way. What would you do?" I asked. "Move them!"
everyone shouted, and we all cheered again. I could see we were on a roll.
"What if you came into the classroom and found that all
the books had fallen off the bookshelf. What would you do?" "Put them back,"
came the chorus. "Suppose this raincoat fell off the hook." I stepped quickly
to a wall covered with raincoats on hooks (about a foot off the floor).
A small Japanese boy shouted, "Iíd hang it up!" And he looked proudly around
the room as everyone cheered.
At this point, I launched into a more professorial talk
about how, when we donít like the way we find things, we just fix them.
We shifted from the classroom to some other real life situations. "Suppose
you were in the Ala Moana shopping center with your mom or your dad, and
you found a little boy who was crying because he couldnít find his parents.
What would you do?" The children had no problem finding solutions. "Iíd
tell my mother." "Iíd take him to the police." "Iíd hold his hand and say
ëDonít worry. Weíll find your parents.í" I posed several problems to the
children, and they quickly found solutions to them all. Where appropriate,
they showed genuine compassion for the people who had the problem, and
they always showed a determination to set things right.
Getting more serious, I asked if they had ever been hungry.
"Can you remember a time when you were waiting for dinner to be ready,
and you were kind of a pest, asking ëWhen do we eat?í over and over again.
Or did you ever come home from school so hungry that you had a snack before
dinner?" Everybody could remember such times.
"Well, there are some children in the world that are very,
very hungry all day, every day. And their parents are so poor, they donít
have anything to give the children to eat. Many of those children are so
hungry, theyíll die if something isnít done right away." Iíd finally reached
the point of my being in the classroom that day. The response was far different
from anything Iíd imagined, standing outside the door waiting to go inside.
The children in the class took the plight of the hungry
children very seriously. There was no joking or kidding around. Nobody
acted silly during that part of the dayís discussion. They exhibited varying
degrees of concern, distress, alarm, even sorrow. And yet, there was no
evidence of them being beaten down or subdued by the tragic news. Their
reactions were far different from those of any adults I had discussed hunger
with.
Whereas the news of world hunger often has a deadening
effect on adults, it made the kindergarten children more alive. They wanted
to do somethingójust as Aaron had that night two years before. For many
of them, the most obvious thing to do was to give up their lunches, and
several offered to turn them over to me so the children wouldnít starve.
Some offered to bring more food from home. Others said they would tell
their parents about the problem so they could do something. "Iíll tell
my father. He can fix things like that." As a bottom line, they were simply
unwilling to have children starve, and they wanted to do something about
it right away.
As I reviewed my encounter with that kindergarten class,
I initially decided that I had been really clever about the way I led up
to the problem of hunger, dealing with simple examples of taking action
when we donít like the way we find things. As it turns out, I gave myself
too much credit in the matter.
Anytime I have discussed world hunger with young children
since then, they have always wanted to do something right away, no matter
how I have led up to it. Iíve become aware that thereís no need for me
to plant the idea of making a difference; itís already there and simply
obvious to anyone under six years of age.
Since I have spoken about hunger to every age group from
kindergarten to senior citizens, I have had the unusual opportunity to
observe an approximation of the growing-up process that individuals go
through. Itís been an enlightening and also a sobering experience.
Up to about junior high school, the young people Iíve
met with simply leap into action. The main difference between kindergarten
and say, seventh grade, is that as children get older, their actions become
more potent. Whereas a five-year-old is likely to want to send his or her
sandwich to Somalia, older children may decide they can accomplish more
by raising money for relief efforts, writing letters to public officials,
and so forth.
At one point I was asked to meet with a seventh grade
class in Nanakuli, a poor, rural, and predominately Hawaiian community
on the west end of Oahu, about forty-five minutes drive from downtown Honolulu.
Although this was my first time inside a Nanakuli classroom, I came equipped
with a full set of stereotypes. Iíd been warned that the students in Nanakuli
were not very academically inclined and that there was a lot of violence
in the classroom. Friends joked about how I should leave my wallet at home,
take a spare set of tires for the car, et cetera. I laughed at the jokes,
but I made a point of parking my car as near the administration building
as possible, and I transferred some money from my wallet to my shirt pocketójust
in case.
I got to the classroom without any incident but, once
I was there, my concerns began to grow. The students came into the classroom
with a fair amount of shoving and horseplay. Moreover, the boys were much
bigger than typical seventh graders. The stereotype about Hawaiians being
bigger than average is well-grounded in fact.
As soon as I began talking about the problem of world
hunger, however, the classroom seemed totally transformed. At the least,
my experience of it was transformed. The horsing around ceased, students
stopped talking to one another and were clearly taking in every word I
said. They asked questions. They wanted to understand the details of hunger
in the world.
It was as though understanding about world hunger was
somehow vital to their own well-being. Eventually, I saw that hunger was
very real in their lives. Although none of them was actually starving,
they were poor enough to have known times when food was scarce, even in
tropical Hawaii. This was no theoretical discussion for them. "Eh, I know
two old people near my house that sometimes donít have nothing to eat.
Last week, my Auntie took them some mango and banana. We should take some
food to them."
By the time I left the classroom, the students had organized
themselves to collect canned goods and to locate hungry people in their
neighborhood.
In the best of all worlds, people would continue becoming
more effective in such matters while maintaining their commitment to doing
something. In fact, something peculiar seems to occur at around the beginning
of high school. If you were to speak to a freshman class in high school
about the problem of world hunger, you would probably find most of the
students interested in and concerned about what you had to say. A few of
the students, however, would probably appear to be almost unconscious.
Even though they would have their eyes open and might even be looking in
your general direction, you would have the distinct impression that they
were not really alive. Images from The Night of the Living Dead might run
through your head.
If you spoke to sophomore, junior, and senior classes,
you would probably find the proportion of zombies increasing as the students
got older. Iím reluctant to talk this way, since I know it will seem as
though I want to belittle the students. Thatís definitely not my purpose,
and yet I know of no more accurate description of the glazed-over, "nobody-home"
look that seems to become more prevalent as young people move through high
school. When you speak to a group of students about the fact that 13 to
18 million people die of hunger each year, they donít seem surprised, they
donít seem to feel bad about it, theyíre not happy: ultimately, nothing
you say seems to register at all. Itís an eerie experience.
Although I cannot say so with any certainty, I suspect
the phenomenon Iíve been describing is the result of young people being
told they are not capable of making a difference, even being ridiculed
for their "naïve" concerns and intentions to save the world. I was
in high school at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott. Living in a small
town in New Hampshire, I had hardly ever seen a black person, and had no
idea about conditions in the South. When I first learned that blacks had
to sit in the back of the bus, I thought that was stupid. Why on earth
should they have to sit in the back of the bus? Let ëem sit anywhere they
wanted. When I began learning that blacks were being brutalized because
of their refusal to abide by the rules of segregation, I was outraged.
I remember going to my teachers and my parents with the
demand and expectation that something be done about segregation in the
South. It was then I learned that "things were more complicated than I
knew." It turned out that I didnít know anything at all about the history
of race relations in the South. I hadnít given much thought to both blacks
and whites growing up, being taught a particular way of behaving toward
one another. I certainly didnít know anything about the economics of race
relations, nor of the political dimension. And there I was naively demanding
that everything be turned on its head. Ultimately, I got very quiet about
the whole thing. I resolved to learn more about the world before I spouted
off about things I didnít really understand.
I suspect thatís the same kind of quiet I confronted in
talking to high school students about world hunger. It seems to me as though
they had "learned their place" in the scheme of thingsóthat they shouldnít
get involved in things they didnít understand or commit themselves to "naïve
causes" in which they couldnít really make a difference.
Speaking to somewhat older people has been a little different
but not really better. On the whole, college students have been no more
committed to making a difference than the high school students Iíve been
describing,, but they are noisier about it. While we might conclude that
high school students are quietly devastated by the discovery that they
donít make a difference, college students are able to explain why they
donít make a difference.
Speaking to college students about world hunger is to
invite lengthy discussions about how the world works, how complicated it
is, and why things canít be changed. None of this is to deny past periods
of radicalism among college studentsóstudents are less radical today than
in the sixties and seventiesóor to deny the impact students have, in fact,
had on national and world events. Weíd probably be one-fourth of the way
to a Hundred Years War in Vietnam except for the role of the nationís college
students in opposing it. The cause of human rights, with its many faces,
has depended heavily on students.
There exists a real irony in the midst of campus activism.
Side by side with powerful movements of social reform can be found a massive
pall of "it canít be done" and "nothing matters." Nor am I describing two
different sets of students. Often those who have committed their lives
to social reform are convinced that they will ultimately fail. According
to a left-wing point of view, the entrenched forces of the military-industrial
complex will ultimately crush all who get in their way. All one can hope
to do is make a noble gesture, perhaps a mighty one, but ultimately it
will not change things.
As I have spoken to older groups about world hunger, Iíve
heard many of the same explanations college students give, reinforced by
the fact that older people have a longer history of not feeling they make
a difference. I ran smack into this in my very first presentation on world
hunger in Honolulu.
Shortly after I returned to Honolulu from the est Advisory
Board meeting, my mother invited me to speak to her Senior Citizens Club.
She was the program chairman and she was delighted to have an excuse to
show off her son. So we arranged for me to come to the club one noon to
tell them about world hunger, The Hunger Project, and what the club members
could do to end starvation in the world.
My main presentation went very well. Iíd been introduced
and presented with a lei. I told them the main facts about hunger, emphasizing
that it could be ended. I suggested various things they might do to fight
hunger, and I told them about a Hunger Project event that was coming soon,
with a six-dollar admission fee.
One of the ladies in the club asked a question. "How can
I be sure this is real?"
"Excuse me?"
"How can I be sure that this really is what you say it
is? I sent money to Boysí Town for years. I sent five dollars every month,
even when it was really hard for me to scrape together the money. Any time
I would think ëMaybe I wonít send it this month,í Iíd think about those
poor orphans who needed it more than me."
She swallowed and continued her story. "Then one day I
read in the paper that Boysí Town had millions of dollars in the bank."
Her eyes scanned the room. "I felt stupid for scraping together five dollars
every month when they had more money than I will ever see."
Now her eyes finally came to rest on me. "I feel really
bad about the people who are starving, and I want to help, but how can
I be sure this isnít something else Iíll feel stupid about later?"
It was one of those situations you appreciate in retrospect,
an opportunity for learningónot unlike learning to swim by falling into
the ocean. There I stood, in front of my mother and her friends, asked
a powerful question I couldnít answer.
While the gears of my mind whirred around and around in
search of an answer, I heard myself answering. "You canít be sure, really.
If you pay six dollars to come to the presentation I mentioned, or if you
give money to some other organization to fight hunger, thereís no way you
can be absolutely certain you wonít feel conned later on. Iím afraid thatís
an unavoidable risk of trying to make a difference. Ultimately, I guess,
you have to weigh how much you want to end hunger against how much you
donít want to look stupid."
Instead of me answering her question, it was as though
someone else were answering mine. All this time, I had been worried about
the possibility of looking stupid because of my participation in The Hunger
Project. Now I saw that I very well might look stupid. That was the price
of trying to make a difference in the world. Oh. Somehow, knowing that
was very liberating for me.
The differences Iíve observed in speaking about hunger
to a spectrum of age groups are similar to the process of growing up Iíve
experienced personally, and I suspect the same may be true for you as well.
As a young child and continuing up to high school, I was unabashedly committed
to making the world better. When I saw things that just werenít the way
they were supposed to be, I tended to leap into action. Then, somewhere
during high school and college, I underwent a subtle shift in the way I
approached life. I learned that I was powerless to do anything about the
way things were. So, I pretty much gave up trying. My own experience with
The Hunger Project and with my study of heroism more generally has recreated
in me the possibility of making a difference. The willingness to step out
and take a chance has been rekindled as well.
My own experience in this regard has not been unique.
During the past few years, the issue of world hungeróboth within The Hunger
Project and outside itóhas sparked true heroism in individuals again and
again. The total, personal commitment which seems needed to cause an ideaís
time to come is alive and growing in the war against hunger, and it is
my privilege to report some examples of that in concluding this chapter.
Individuals in Action
Joan Holmes
Joan Holmes is an excellent first example of an individual
taking responsibility for world hunger. When Erhard announced his commitment
to ending hunger, Holmes gave up a successful career as a school psychologist
and volunteered to be responsible for bringing the project into existence
as interim manager.
While Hunger Project founders Erhard, Denver, and Fuller
initially looked for a nationally prominent person to take the position
of executive director, things turned out rather differently. Within a few
months, it became clear to them that Joan Holmes was exactly the person
for the job. She had demonstrated repeatedly her fundamental grasp of the
generating principles of The Hunger Project and what it would take to put
them into action.
For Holmesís part, becoming executive director of The
Hunger Project meant creating a twenty-year, personal commitment to the
end of hunger. Itís worth noting that nothing in her previous career pointed
logically toward her new job. Nor was there any guarantee that her decision
would prove a wise one. No one expected Holmes to take on the end of hunger.
The world was not clamoring for The Hunger Project. In short, nothing reasonable
pointed toward the dramatic shift in her life. Joan Holmes became personally
responsible for the end of world hunger in the same way Martin Luther King,
Jr., became responsible for civil rights and Ralph Nader became responsible
for consumersí rights: because she said so.
By the fall of 1983, Joan Holmes had become successful
by any measure. The Hunger Project had become respected throughout the
hunger-response community. With 2.6 million individuals having enrolled
themselves in the project, and in the cause of the end of world hunger,
The Hunger Project was the largest private voluntary organization in the
world. Holmes was now accustomed to meeting with leading scientists and
heads of state around the world. From an ordinary human point of view,
Joan Holmes had taken a chance but made good on it. Now, she could sit
back and enjoy the life of a prestigious international leader.
By fall 1983, however, Joan Holmes had concluded that
the time had come for The Hunger Project to move into the trenches and
challenge hunger face-to-face. Having developed a powerful and well-trained
staff in San Francisco, Holmes now created a three-person executive body
to run the San Francisco office, and she moved to Bombay to establish The
Hunger Project in India.
It is estimated that one-third of all the worldís hungry
people live in India. The second most populous country in the world, India
is divided by language, religion, ethnicity, politics, class, and caste.
More recovery and development programs have failed in India than in any
other country. In short, all the circumstances argue against The Hunger
Project having any impact in India.
In Holmesís view, her mission is not to "take The Hunger
Project to India" but to provide an opportunity for it to arise among the
Indian people. Rather than pity, she bring with her a respect for the ability
of individual Indians to take on the problem of hunger and end it, and
she is personally committed to forming a partnership with them in that.
So all the circumstances are against the success of the partnership? Holmes
replies: "An individualís word is more powerful than circumstances."
Monique Grodzki
In 1979, Monique Grodzki was a nine-year-old growing up
in suburban New York when she happened to see a television documentary
on the plight of Cambodian refugees. While moved by the tragedy of it all,
Monique was more powerfully struck by the peopleís undaunted spirit. "
I found it amazing that they were still singing and had the hope and strength
to go on. After I saw that, I actually cried. I really had to do something
about it."
Monique was also moved by the discovery that children
suffer most from hunger and from war. In her view, children should have
a say about wars, about government: "They should have a say about things
in general, about things that affect them." Monique resolved to give children
a say in establishing the priorities of the world. "Weíre putting millions
and billions of dollars into nuclear armaments. Wouldnít it be better to
have a ëstop world hungerí race than a nuclear armament race?"
The Childrenís Peace Committee was the result of Moniqueís
resolve: its purpose to "help abolish world hunger and promote world peace."
By 1982, a growing membership of two hundred children aged ten to thirteen
were actively engaged in a variety of activities. Theyíve addressed the
general public at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza of the United Nations, circulated
petitions, collected money and sent it to organizations fighting hunger
in the field. Looking closer to home, they raised money to buy bullet-proof
vests for police officers in New York, and contributed to the family of
an officer killed in the line of duty. More important than the specific
activities of Monique and her friends is the simple fact of their willingness
to take responsibility for something much bigger than anyone would expect
a to comprehend. If nothing else, it makes it that much harder for adults
to feel too small to make a difference.
Leonard Solomon
Harold Solomon
Leonard Solomon, president of Budget Rent-A-Car in Miami,
found that one way to bring public attention to the problem of world hunger
was to put Hunger Project bumper stickers on all the Budget cars in Southern
Florida and New Orleans. But it didnít stop there. Solomon was an avid
tennis player. Working hard with his son Harold, a professional tennis
player, he organized a series of annual tennis benefits on behalf of the
fight against hunger. In 1983, it was my privilege to watch the likes of
Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe play tennis, and to accept a check for forty
thousand dollars toward the elimination of hunger in the world. Through
their commitment and imagination, Lenny and Harold Solomon have made it
possible for people to end hunger by playing tennis.
Valerie Harper
Valerie Harper, Emmy winner for her leading role in the
"Rhoda" television series, was one of those attending the March 1977 meeting
in which Werner Erhard introduced the Hunger Project. Since then, she has
used her public recognition as a vehicle for drawing public attention to
the issue of world hunger. In 1980, Harper joined a delegation visiting
Somalia at the height of a hunger crisis brought on by drought and an unending
war between Somalia and Ethiopia over the contested Ogaden region. Returning
to the United States, she addressed the House of Representatives and raised
the issue of hunger in East Africa in discussions with countless government
officials.
Father Miles Riley
One of the most moving stories from the 1980 trip to Somalia
is told by Father Miles Riley, a Roman Catholic priest on the staff of
the San Francisco diocese. Riley went to Somalia to find out what the church
might do to aid the refugees.
In the course of touring a crowded, dusty refugee camp
near the Ethiopian border, Riley was led inside a tiny dark hut. Going
from the bright sunshine outside, Riley was at first blind and could only
sense a mass of bodies surrounding him. As his vision gradually returned,
he found himself in the midst of several mothers, clutching listless, skin-and-bones
babies as though hoping their love could take the place of medicine and
food.
By the time he could see fully, Riley found himself the
focus of all attention in the hut. Was he a doctor? Had he come to save
their babies? One desperate mother struggled to her feet and thrust her
baby at the priest, saying something Riley couldnít understand.
After devoting his adult life to serving others, the priest
took the fragile infant in his arms and found himself crushed by the realization
that he had nothing to give. "I wasnít a doctor," he explained. "I had
no medicine to administer. I had no food to give." Then his priestly instincts
came alive. "Iím often called to minister spiritually to the sick and the
dying, and I thought perhaps I should bless the child. But then, I realized
that all these people were Moslems." From their point of view, his priestly
contribution would be of no value.
The language barrier prevented the priest from even offering
words of hope or comfort. He couldnít explain that he was on a fact-finding
mission or that he would work for Somalian relief when he returned to the
United States. Stripped of all his conventional tools for contributing,
Riley found an answer at a more basic human level. "Without thinking, I
kissed the baby with all the love and compassion I was feeling right then
and gave it back to its mother. Her face burst into the biggest smile you
can imagine, and she held her baby up for everyone to see."
John Denver
As I mentioned earlier, John Denver was one of the three
principal founders of The Hunger Project in 1977. Since then he has continued
to look for ways of making his personal contribution to the end of hunger.
It was not surprising, perhaps, that he would write a song, " I Want to
Live," to draw popular attention to the problem in a way that showed the
human dignity of the hungry rather than holding them up as objects of pity.
Going beyond the obvious, Denver produced a movie on world
hunger for use in schools. In large part, the purpose of the film was to
eradicate some of the mythology surrounding the problem. As the film documents,
hunger persists, it doesnít have to, and individuals will make the difference
in ending it.
Denver was also active in bringing the issue of world
hunger to the attention of the Carter administration. Later, he served
on Carterís Presidential Commission on World and Domestic Hunger.
Pam Jeffcock
For Pam Jeffcock of Columbia Falls, Montana, the commitment
to end world hunger took the form of a county-wide food bank. In addition,
she was responsible for the creation of a public service announcement to
bring the message of ending world hunger to Montana television viewers
three times a day. She reports, "The focus of my life has changed. It is
something much bigger than myself."
Kenny Rogers
When country singer and composer Kenny Rogers and wife
Marianne decided to strike a blow against world hunger, they looked for
some way to leverage their contribution. Thus, they donated a million dollars
to create "The World Hunger Awards" to acknowledge the efforts of members
of the mass media who draw public attention to the issue of world hunger.
Roger explains:
Marianne and I felt that although one million dollars
is a substantial sum of money, it would have little impact by itself on
world hunger. We found that recent reports pin-point
public education as the major key to the elimination
of hunger. This awards program provided us with the opportunity to effectively
encourage, honor and rewardÖthose who contribute substantially each year
to the education of the public about the issue and its elimination.
Robert Clampitt
Robert Clampitt is publisher of the childrenís news magazine
Childrenís Express. During
the crisis in Cambodia, Clampitt supported his young staff
in preparing a special Child for Child Handbook, giving children suggestions
on how they could make a significant contribution to children halfway around
the world. The manual gave practical tips on how to bring the message of
world hunger to friends, family, school, and community, and advised on
project development, fund-raising, and publicity. Quite aside from the
contribution made to those starving in Cambodia, Clampitt helped empower
a new generation in taking responsibility for their world instead of simply
suffering its injustices.
Marguerite Chandler
Marguerite Chandler is a New Jersey wife and mother of
two teenage boys. Once she became aware of the problem of world hunger
through The Hunger Project, she began looking to see if there was any way
an "average" person could make a difference. Here are a few of the answers
she found for herself in the first two years of her commitment:
-
She founded a county-wide Food Bank Network to coordinate
the efforts of the various county agencies involved in feeding people.
-
She has worked with state and county penal systems to give
convicts an opportunity to assist in food distribution.
-
She is creating an Aid to Friends program to provide volunteers
to assist the handicapped and elderly in preparing their meals.
-
She has worked with local athletic teams to coordinate food
drives with games. Five tons of food were collected at one game, for example.
-
She is coordinating a planning committee for a state-wide
conference dedicated to ending hunger in New Jersey.
-
She has written and recorded Public Service Announcements
and distributed them to over six hundred radio stations across the country.
-
She organized a three-week exhibit on ending hunger for the
state capitol building and arranged to have leading public officials photographed
at the exhibit.
-
She subscribes to a clipping service in order to keep track
of articles on hunger in the media; she then redistributes the clippings
to other individuals and organizations.
These are only a few of the ways Chandler found she
could make a personal contribution to
the end of hunger, offering a powerful illustration of personal
responsibility in action. Appropriately, Chandler was recently named Woman
of the Year in her county, and she used that recognition as another vehicle
for drawing attention to the problem of hunger.
Raul Julia
Raul Julia, an actor appearing frequently in movies and
on television, is best known as a star of numerous Broadway productions.
Concerned with the problem of world hunger, Julia has found numerous ways
of pursuing that concern. As one example, theater-goers attending Juliaís
performances find a surprise in their theater programs. The listing of
Juliaís theater credits concludes with a lengthy discussion of the problem
of world hunger and suggests ways people can contribute to its solution.
Willie Stargell
When Pittsburgh Pirates baseball star Willie Stargell
became aware of the problem of hunger, he announced he would find some
way of making a special contribution. Later, when he was to be honored
for his career in baseball, he asked his Pittsburgh fans to bring cans
of food to the stadium for distribution to local food banks.
Harry Chapin
Happily, the list could go on and on, and it grows daily
as more and more individuals find ways of taking personal responsibility
for the problem of world hunger. I confess a reluctance to stop this reporting,
since it means overlooking hundreds and hundreds of genuine heroes.
No one was ever more concerned about world hunger or looked
harder to find what he could do than composer-singer Harry Chapin. Throughout
the 1960s, Harry devoted himself to a variety of social causes, but he
eventually came to the conclusion that there was no greater injustice in
the world than could be found in the cases of the hundreds of millions
of human beings who went to bed hungry night after night. In1975, he joined
with Father Bill Ayres to form World Hunger Year, an organization dedicated
to "give constant and consistent exposure to the hunger problem." From
then on, he was to dedicate his professional and personal life to that
issue. A substantial proportion of every concert season thereafter was
devoted specifically to ending hunger, and Chapin never gave a concert
that didnít draw peoplesí attention to the problem.
When President Carter appointed a Commission on World
and Domestic Hunger, Chapin was an obvious choice as a commissioner. Many
observers felt that Chapin was the primary force in getting the commission
created in the first place, and he brought a powerful commitment and sense
of urgency to the commissionís deliberations.
Harry Chapin ran his life according to the following principles,
which should serve as an undying legacy for us all:
-
When in doubtÖdo something.
-
Iíd rather be wrong than be frightened.
-
The key to my life is that Iím willing to make an ass of
myself.
When Harry Chapinís life came to a premature end through
a heart attack and automobile
accident on a Long Island freeway in 1981, there was no more
personally committed to the public interest. In perhaps the worldís most
appropriate typographical error, the Washington Post reported that Harry
Chapin died of "a massive heart." |