The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Mike Kalush Douglas Coutts, Senior Advisor for the UN World Food Programme speaks in the Cherokee Park Ballroom on Tuesday afternoon about how the nation's financial crisis affects the UN's ability to distribute food. In his speech, he states that it takes only 25 cents to fill this red cup with a porridge that has enough micronutrients to sustain human life.

Amid a financial recession that is impacting the globe, the World Food Programme continues to raise money and awareness about the world hunger crisis that is affecting about 1 billion people who are living on a dollar a day, according to one UN advisor.

"Hunger is a silent emergency," said Douglas Coutts, senior advisor for the UN World Food Programme, at a keynote speech in the Lory Student Center on Tuesday afternoon.

Coutts said that the recession has impacted the World Food Programme's funding, but donors have increased their contributions in order to make up for that deficit.

"Young people make the biggest impact because people pay attention to them." Coutts said. "If more people raise awareness, the government will listen, the program will receive more funding and we will be able to make an even greater impact on the global hunger crisis."

The audience of about 50 students and residents, listened to Coutts discuss the goals and accomplishments of the World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian agency in the world.

Coutts said that the program is trying to use food to break the cycle of intergenerational hunger by cooperating with governments and other organizations to feed the hungriest people and set up food programs in starving countries.

The WFP works with 2,000 agencies, like Save the Children, in order to achieve their five main objectives: save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies, prepare for emergencies, restore and rebuild lives after emergencies, reduce chronic hunger and under-nutrition everywhere and strengthen the capacity of countries to reduce hunger.

"Voluntary contributions to the program come primarily from country governments and voluntary donors," Coutts said.

Continued...

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