Famine In The Horn Of Africa

There’s a lot of people who need a helping hand, especially now.  Sometimes when I’m rushing around trying to get my work done, my coaching clients helped, my speaking engagements met, my copywriting and consulting projects complete – it’s so easy to forget how blessed I am, and how blessed my family is. I was browsing the internet for news articles, clicked on CNN and the first article on the main page was about the horrendous famine in the horn of Africa.

This isn’t new.

As a child I can remember participating in the 40 hour famine numerous times - a fundraiser run by World Vision to raise money hunger relief in Africa.  As the name suggests, we “starved” ourselves for 40 hours and got people to sponsor us, for every hour of the 40 that we went without food.

As a child who had (and still has) an infinite amount of room for sweet stuff, going without chocolate for 40 hours felt like punishment enough.  Let alone without real food.  Of course we were allowed to “cheat” and could drink as much water as we liked and have a drink of orange juice and one barley sugar (or wrapped candy) every hour.  Hardly starvation.

Today, as the mother of a young child I can’t even imagine what it must be like to not have enough food to feed your child.  The article and the images I saw on CNN.com really moved me.  If you’re interested in reading it also, click here.

Of course reading does nothing to help these poor people, except give them sympathy which they can neither eat nor drink.  In the article you’ll see there’s a link on there to make a donation to a US aid organization.  When you click on it there’s a long list of charities…I chose the first one Action Against Hunger.  87 cents out of every dollar goes straight to hunger relief.  If you feel similarly moved then I’d also urge you to donate.

Here's the US Aid donation link again