The resources many of us take for granted like food and water are not everyone takes takes for granted. Roughly 842 million people world wide live on less than a couple dollars a day and in some cases less than $1 a day. To put that number into perspective roughly one in nine people in the world are malnourished (2016 World Hunger. n.d.). World hunger is the malnutrition or undernutrition in people who do not have enough food. According to the 2016 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics there are two types of malnutrition. The first is called protein-energy malnutrition which is a lack of calories and protein (2016 World Hunger. n.d.). The second type is micronutrient deficiency which is a deficiency in certain vitamins (2016 World Hunger. n.d.). Prior to social media the main way people could help was by being active in things like Kids Against Hunger which is an organization that packs and ships food to kids who are without food. With social media, people are able to donate money to sites like GoFundMe (if someone sets up a page for world hunger) and WorldHungerRelief.org. Many sites like Facebook and Twitter help bring awareness to the issue however how can we go beyond collecting “likes”?
Casper van Vark, author of World Hunger Day: Can Twitter end World Hunger, looks at how social media can be used to do more than collect likes to spread awareness. One foundation that she comments about is the Global Poverty Project which presents a challenge to users of Facebook and Twitter. The challenge consists of encouraging people to live below the poverty line of roughly $1.50 for five days. The challengers then post pictures of meals and recipes as well as describe how the challenge is going. Vark says that “this approach of working with something that people already talk about has enabled us to draw in people who had not previously supported a development campaign”. So can Twitter really end world hunger? No, however if combined with individual involvement as I mentioned before it will give people a different perspective on the difficulties living below the poverty line.
Sources:
2016 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved January 22, 2017, from http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/
Vark, C. V. (2014, May 28). World Hunger Day: can Twitter end world hunger? Retrieved January 22, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/may/28/social-media-raising-awareness-world-hunger