-----Original Message----- From: Plant Tissue Culture [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of C. S. Prakash Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 4:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Feed the Hungry Clicking on the UN hunger site! In the spirit of the Christmas holidays, here is a web site that lets you to feed the hungry in the world just by clicking on it! Please visit this site today and also spread this message to your friends! http://www.thehungersite.com The Washington Post says about this site - "Think of all the time you spend clicking aimlessly or fruitlessly around the Web. At the Hunger Site, one click actually accomplishes something: It sends a serving of food to a starving person, at no cost to you. Corporate sponsors provide the food in exchange for free advertisement and links. Since its June 1 start-up, the site has sent enough money to the United Nations' World Food Program to purchase more than 4 million servings of dietary staples; a WFP official calls it 'an extraordinary testimony to the power of the Internet.' The privacy-protected site is run without profit by John Breen, an Indiana software programmer who initially wanted to support Third World education but decided hunger was the priority. As his world map arrestingly illustrates, starvation kills 24,000 people daily, most of them children." See the FAQ for details but please forward this message to as many people and groups as you can. Yours, Prakash ================== HUNGER FACTS . About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five. Today 10% of children in developing countries die before the age of five. This is down from 28% fifty years ago. Famine and wars cause just 10% of hunger deaths, although these tend to be the ones you hear about most often. The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition. Families simply cannot get enough to eat. This in turn is caused by extreme poverty. Besides death, chronic malnutrition also causes impaired vision, listlessness, stunted growth, and greatly increased susceptibility to disease. Severely malnourished people are unable to function at even a basic level. It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year. Often it takes just a few simple resources for impoverished people to be able to grow enough food to become self-sufficient. These resources include quality seeds, appropriate tools, and access to water. Small improvements in farming techniques and food storage methods are also helpful. Many hunger experts believe that ultimately the best way to reduce hunger is through education. Educated people are best able to break out of the cycle of poverty that causes hunger. C. S. Prakash Tuskegee University Center for Plant Biotechnology Research Tuskegee, AL 36088, USA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
