The International Food Crisis

If you aren't aware of the international food crisis that is hitting our country and thousands of others, let me help clue you in.
World Vision, one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations, announced Tuesday that it cannot feed 1.5 million of the 7.5 million people it fed last year and made an urgent appeal for international donors to step in.
In three years, prices for the basic staples that feed the world have risen by a staggering 83%. For those in the developing world, affording food to is a daily struggle for survival. Without action, 100 million people around the world will face deeper poverty and hunger, and hundreds of thousands will confront famine and starvation.
Some of World Vision's food aid programs have been cut altogether affecting people in nearly every region of the world. The magnitude of the shortfall is unprecedented and likely to get worse as the year progresses.
If the world community doesn't invest this now, everyone will pay for it later and there will be massive economic implications for much of the world. Their work forces won't develop properly, not to mention the horror of it from a humanitarian standpoint.
The cutbacks have already begun, said Dean Hirsch, president of World Vision International, in a written statement. "Despite our best efforts, more than a million of our beneficiaries are no longer receiving food aid."
More than half of them are children.

In Haiti, a child sits eating cakes made of mud mixed with a little sugar and oil to try and beat the hunger pangs. Stop for a moment and picture that child. Now imagine that child is yours.

In the face of this suffering, we cannot be silent. Please help.
Click HERE to send the following petition to President Bush:

President Bush,
The soaring cost of staple foods and the resulting hunger crisis has caused riots from Haiti to Bangladesh, threatens hundreds of thousands of people with starvation and could push one hundred million more people deeper into poverty. Please build on your recent commitment by taking immediate action to:

1) Prioritize issues of global poverty, including the world hunger crisis on the agenda of the G8 Summit this July in Japan.

2) At the summit, secure commitments for additional resources for all types of food assistance and increased agricultural productivity in developing countries.