Deadline: 16 November 2014 to submit the results of projects (project implementation 16 September – 16 November 2014)
Do you know how much food is wasted everyday in the schools/universities around the globe? Do you know how much food is wasted everyday in your school/university? One third of all the food produced worldwide is wasted. Food waste is a massive global problem that has negative humanitarian, environmental and financial implications and schools are a huge part of this story. In England, schools throw out some 123,000 tonnes of food a year, costing around £250 million a year. In America, 67 pounds of lunch is wasted every school year. On campuses in Los Angeles – unified, the second-largest school system in the US -, students throw out at least $100,000 worth of food a day.
Do you know how many people die of hunger every year?
The World Food Program (WFP) claims Hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria & tuberculosis combined. Let us share the Hunger Statistics of the World Food Program (WFP):
- Some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That’s about one in nine people on earth.
- The vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries, where 13.5 percent of the population is undernourished.
- Asia is the continent with the most hungry people – two thirds of the total. The percentage in southern Asia has fallen in recent years but in western Asia it has increased slightly.
- Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest prevalence (percentage of population) of hunger. One person in four there is undernourished.
- Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five – 3.1 million children each year.
- One out of six children – roughly 100 million – in developing countries is underweight.
- One in four of the world’s children are stunted. In developing countries the proportion can rise to one in three.
- If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.
- 66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.
- WFP calculates that US$3.2 billion is needed per year to reach all 66 million hungry school-age children.
The solution is in our hands. With a few simple changes to our habits, we can significantly shift this paradigm.
The Think.Eat.Save campaign of the Save Food Initiative, is a partnership between UNEP (United Nations Environment Program), FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and Messe Düsseldorf, and in support of the UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge, which seeks to add its authority and voice to these efforts in order to galvanize widespread global, regional and national actions, catalyze more sectors of society to be aware and to act, including through exchange of inspiring ideas and projects between those players already involved and new ones that are likely to come on board.
