What does one billion mean to you?  It’s that next level, the powerful tier above a million that gets our attention.  On the heels of the Academy Awards, the movie “Avatar” has made more than 2.5 billion dollars worldwide—and it’s not done yet.  Ted Turner bestowed a billion-dollar gift on the United Nations a few years back.  We know about the Gates Foundation.  And in the news lately, Tiger Woods has been dubbed the only athlete ever to reach that mark in earnings.  But then there’s the stark reality we learned about in 2009 that the number of people who are chronically hungry in the world has reached one billion.

One billion.  Where do I start?  How can I make a difference?

If you’re like me, you have asked yourself these questions.  It’s a mind-numbing number, one that can make making a difference seem futile.

But we’re the church.  We don’t get to make that decision for ourselves.  We are called to act.  We are called to reach out to our neighbor.  Not acting is not an option.

So if you find that number so incomprehensible that it almost makes you not want to try, set it aside.  I’m not suggesting you ignore the reality of the global picture of hunger but just keep it in perspective.  Lead with your gut for a moment.  Is it okay that thousands and millions and even one billion people are chronically hungry?  Is it okay that one person in your community is sleeping on the streets or walking around without knowing where that next meal will come from? 

If you’ve ever been intensely hungry and you had to wait an hour or two to eat, recall those hunger rumblings and allow that to take over your gut.  It’s that gut reaction that has the potential to circumvent numbers that almost seem made up.  It’s your gut that in a moment of cerebral paralysis can kick into overdrive that instinct, that compassion that has compelled you to read this blog and care about doing something about it.

Follow your gut.

They are cardboard, small and round. We all have them, often in multiple rooms of our home, and all too often…they stack up in our garbage bins. What are they? Toilet paper tubes! As silly as it may seem my pet peeve is having nowhere in the restroom to put a used up toilet paper roll’s tube (except the trash) when it’s ready to be switched out and prime for reusing or recycling. Last week I finally put an extra receptacle in my bathroom to collect these tubes in one place. Now they are prime for recycling! Today I also found some great ideas for how to reuse toilet paper tubes from the World Environmental Organization and The Green Parent’s websites.

Here are my favorites:

• Use in place of a peat pot. Fill with potting soil, place in a plastic butter/ice cream tub, plant the seed and water. When the plant sprouts, plant the seedling (tube and all) in the ground. The tube rots away.
• Stuff an extra set of stockings into a tube and keep in your desk drawer at work, your glove compartment, etc. in case of a run.
• Stuff a few plastic bags into the tube and then place the tube in the glove compartment of your car. It will keep them tidy and on-hand for when you need them.
• Use for storing long pieces of ribbon which have been saved from packages. This will keep the ribbon smooth.
• Donate old toilet paper or paper towel tubes to your local school or library to use as craft projects.

So whether you reuse your toilet paper tubes for gardening or ribbons, or you recycle them straight away, thanks for keeping them out of the trash!

Engaging in social media can be dangerous.  Between my Twitter account (you can follow me and my friends @hungerbites), our social networking site (join us on The Table), and various blogs, I find myself conflicted… perhaps a friend from the blogosphere can help.

It started when my friend Mark posed a question on The Table.  He wrote:

“Organizations like Amnesty International, Oxfamand so many others are focusing on the same [hunger and poverty] issues, and with the leading of people like Jeffrey Sachs and Esther Duflo, and major think tanks like those atYale, Columbia and MIT and so many others also working on these issues, plus Protestant and Catholic Christians involved, why has so little progress been made?”

The upshot of his question is, why, if we can all agree that hunger and poverty are evils, and if we have put so much intellectual energy into addressing them, have we not made the progress we need?  Why are hunger and poverty a perennial problem?

Bill Easterly points to one problem–too often the self interests of a given NGO (or even a division within the same NGO!) take the place of the needs of those they are supposedly in the business of supporting.  He offers the example of the health care aid that is given to Ethiopia.  Citing Owen Barder,

“According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in Ethiopia about 65% of the population (52 million people) live in areas at risk of malaria. Malaria is the leading cause of health problems, responsible for about 27% of deaths; and malaria epidemics are increasing. TheHIV/AIDS prevalence rate among adults is 2.1% (2007) – that’s about 1.6 million people living with HIV.

“Of $5.15 per head provided in aid for health to Ethiopia in 2007, about $3.18 per head was earmarked for HIV  while about $0.26 cents per head was allocated to malaria control.  Given the relatively low burden of HIV, earmarking 60% of health aid for HIV is excessive relative to other needs for health spending.

“Of course it is right that we should try to make sure that everybody with HIV has access to medicines to keep them healthy, and … to prevent spread of the disease. But we should also make sure that people have bednets and drugs to stop malaria, provide childhood vaccination to prevent easily preventable diseases, ensure access to contraception and safe abortions, and, above all, enough funding to provide basic health services that would save thousands of lives and suffering.  Yet we are not willing to provide enough money to do all of this.  It is in this context that it is damaging to earmark 60% of health aid to HIV.”

This for me raises the important question of how we accompany those who are poor and vulnerable.  How do we seek their interests rather than our own?  How do we truly work with and on behalf of those who are marginalized?  Working for a non-profit agency myself, it means I have to constantly watch my motivations for a given strategy or initiative or program.  (I found a blog recently that speaks directly to this issue. They pose as a real aid agency with the tag line “A charitable organization committed to working anywhere where generalized poverty and misery will ensure significant levels of comfort for our staff.”  The satire is biting, but the point is well made.)

We have to be honest about who benefits from our decisions.  And I think this translates into everyday life as well.  Who benefits from the decisions I make regarding consumption?  Who benefits from a given policy or politician I support?  And so on…

All of this points to a larger problem with human ability to empathize and seek the good of another.  But that is a question too big for this post. Until I have the courage to address it, maybe you can provide me with your thoughts on the subject.

-David Creech