So today is Blog Action Day, and according to the site’s conservative estimates, around 9.3 million people is the total readership for today’s blog posts about poverty. Yet at the same time, Oxfam highlights the fact that 967 million people are currently going hungry worldwide, boosted to that figure by an extra 119 million people being devastated by rising food prices this year.
According to my shonky GCSE-level maths brain, that’s 104 hungry people for every single person sitting reading this. Imagine that – more than a hundred people who can’t afford to eat for everyone who will even be made aware of Blog Action Day. So what’s the point in just screaming our collective outrage across the internet for a day?
Consider that despite the effects of climate change on crops and harvests, there is more than enough food in the world to ensure that no one needs to go hungry. What’s going wrong? Unfair trade rules continue to push people further into poverty, climate change hammers the poorest people in the world hardest and they are the least able to cope with the effects, and the US government pledges enough money to its banks to end global poverty for two whole years.
And all this in the same world in which Peter Mandelson can get a £1 million golden goodbye for his job as EU Trade Commissioner, a job that saw him do everything in his power to block development out of trade negotiations explicitly set out to help poor countries.
Individually, we might not be able to do much to right the global systems that conspire against the poorest people (unless you’re Peter Mandelson, in which case see above), but we can certainly do something that will make a difference. Give £2 a month to a charity whose work you respect. Lend your voice to something worth winning. Make a one-off donation to an appeal. Get angry about something. Take your old rubbish down to a charity shop.
If enough people take it upon themselves to take even one action, the world would become a better place overnight. And if Blog Action Day can help to achieve that, then maybe it’s not just a load of people virtually wringing their hands for a day and then going back to business as usual.
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104 hungry people per blogger ! That’s help me to feel more than lucky.
Blogging could be a sign of wellness, especially in my case, being a foodblogger.
[...] [10:02:53] Stuart Fowkes says: did you read my blog action day post? [...]
for now, i turn to sites like freerice, kiva, and goodsearch, as ways to help alleviate poverty online.
saw this post via the front page of blog action day. it’s great that you’re participating.