World Food Program USA Blog

Reading list for the holidays

It is that time of the year where people are busy thinking about gifts for their loved ones.  As someone who loves to read, there are three books in particular that I have added to my wish list. These books have been highly recommended by friends and colleagues as books that address the issues of poverty and hunger.  (I won’t pretend I’ve already read these myself, but they sure do look like interesting reads.) In case you are looking for books on the subject this year, here’s my wish list which you could use as your own shopping list.

Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty by Roger Thurow and Scott Killman

From the Enough book website, “For more than 40 years, humankind has had the knowledge, tools, and resources to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet at the start of the twenty-first century, 25,000 people a day—and nearly six million children a year—die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases. Malnutrition kills more Africans than AIDS and malaria combined.

“We in the West tend to think of famine as a natural disaster, brought about by drought; or as the legacy of war and corrupt leaders. But Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, award-winning writers on Africa, development, and agriculture, see famine as the result of bad policies spanning the political spectrum. In this compelling investigative narrative, they explain through vivid human stories how the agricultural revolutions that transformed Asia and Latin America stopped short in Africa, and how our sometimes well-intentioned strategies—alternating with ignorance and neglect—have conspired to keep the world’s poorest people hungry and unable to feed themselves.

“And they argue passionately and convincingly that this generation is the one that could finally end the scourge that has haunted the human race since its beginning.”

It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower by Michela Wrong

According to the Harper Collins review, “In January 2003, Kenya—seen as the most stable country in Africa—was hailed as a model of democracy after the peaceful election of its new president, Mwai Kibaki. By appointing respected longtime reformer John Githongo as anticorruption czar, the new Kikuyu government signaled its determination to end the corrupt practices that had tainted the previous regime. Yet only two years later, Githongo himself was on the run, having discovered that the new administration was ruthlessly pillaging public funds.

’Under former President Moi, his Kalenjin tribesmen ate. Now it's our turn to eat,’ politicians and civil servants close to the president told Githongo. As a member of the government and the president's own Kikuyu tribe, Githongo was expected to cooperate. But he refused to be bound by ethnic loyalty. Githongo had secretly compiled evidence of official malfeasance and, at great personal risk, made the painful choice to go public. The result was Kenya's version of Watergate.

Michela Wrong's account of how a pillar of the establishment turned whistle-blower, becoming simultaneously one of the most hated and admired men in Kenya, grips like a political thriller. At the same time, by exploring the factors that continue to blight Africa—ethnic favoritism, government corruption, and the smug complacency of Western donor nations—It's Our Turn to Eat probes the very roots of the continent's predicament. It is a story that no one concerned with our global future can afford to miss.”

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

The Barnes and Noble synopsis says, “Two Pulitzer Prize winners expose the most pervasive human rights violation of our era...the oppression of women in the developing world...and tell us what we can do about it.

“An old Chinese proverb says ‘Women hold up half the sky.’ Then why do the women of Africa and Asia persistently suffer human rights abuses? Continuing their focus on humanitarian issues, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn take us to Africa and Asia, where many women live in profoundly dire circumstances...and some succeed against all odds.

“A Cambodian teenager is sold into sex slavery; a formerly illiterate woman becomes a surgeon in Addis Ababa. An Ethiopian woman is left for dead after a difficult birth; a gang rape victim galvanizes the international community and creates schools in Pakistan. An Afghan wife is beaten by her husband and mother-in-law; a former Peace Corps volunteer founds an organization that educates and campaigns for women's rights in Senegal.

“Through their powerful true stories, the authors show that the key to progress lies in unleashing women's potential, that change is possible, and that each of us can play a role in making it happen.”

Have you read these books? Let me know what you think of them!

-Jessica Alatorre
Outreach Associate
Friends of WFP

Empowering women to end poverty

Yesterday at a lecture in Washington, D.C., husband-and-wife journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn introduced their new book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” The talk focused on empowering women as a means to break the cycle of poverty, with a particular emphasis on maternal health and maternal mortality. They hope people will “join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts.”

A review of the book in the Washington Post left me thinking about the role that women really can play in ending poverty. According to Carolyn See, “These Pulitzer Prize-winning authors see the treatment of women in developing countries as the great story of this century, a moral issue, sure, but also as an economic one. What if by oppressing half their population, countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have been shooting themselves in their collective foot?”

She goes on to say that “’Half the Sky’ is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, but also a call for volunteers. It asks us to open our eyes to this enormous humanitarian issue.”

WuDunn and Kristof were joined for the discussion by Aparajita Gogoi, National Coordinator of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood–India, and Jérémie Zoungrana, National Advisor of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood–Burkina Faso and Rwanda. While WuDunn and Kristof focused on the stories of women on the ground whom they interviewed for the book, Gogoi and Zoungrana provided examples of the societal barriers that make women’s empowerment a challenge in their countries. All participants talked about the need for both social and economic empowerment.

In both its emergency relief and development projects, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has a special commitment to helping women gain equal access to life's basic necessities. Inherited hunger, which causes undernourished mothers to give birth to malnourished children, is a major impediment to child development. Thus maternal undernutrition endangers mothers and children alike. This is why programs like WFP’s Maternal-and-Child Health and Nutrition program, which provides nutritional assistance to pregnant and nursing mothers, are so important. 

In 2000, world leaders met at the U.N. Headquarters in New York to establish the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which must be met by 2015. WFP’s mandate for meeting MDG 1 (to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger) is obvious. But WFP's food assistance can also play an important role in realizing several more of the eight MDGs: empowering women, reducing child and maternal mortality and improving maternal health.

”Half the Sky” discusses how to accomplish MDGs 3 and 5. MDG 3 is simple: promote gender equality and empower women. MDG 5 focuses on improving maternal health. The World Bank has a section dedicated to the MDGs on its website, stating, “When a country educates its girls, its mortality rates usually fall, fertility rates decline, and the health and education prospects of the next generation improve.”

Programs like WFP’s can improve gender equality and strengthen the partnership between men and women, leading to more effective food security and ultimately breaking the cycle of poverty and hunger.  

Watch the discussion with Kristof and WuDunn.

Read more about how WFP is empowering women around the globe.

Learn more about women, poverty and economics.