World Vision

Sue donates to World Vision and asked me to listen in on a conference call by their CEO. I knew they fed the hungry, but I didn’t realize how much. They have 800,000 donors and feed several million people daily.

In areas with Internally Displaced People, they often stay even after armies and the UN have pulled out. While a Christian organization, they don’t proselytize, both out of conviction and because it can be dangerous. They feed and help anyone, regardless of religion, and work in Hindu and Muslim areas as well as Christian, including the West Bank.

From the conference call:

In war zones areas like Congo, with displaced people, the death rate for children soars. Just providing soap cuts the child death rate by 50%.

Some of their workers in India had to hide in forests when Hindu extremists burned homes and raped nuns.

Haiti got just hit with four back-to-back hurricanes, which devastated the island. In a few areas where World Vision was able to build floodwalls, those towns survived, but some of the valleys remained flooded for weeks. They’ve delivered 23,000 tons of food to Haiti this year.

Poverty drives women and girls to prostitution because they have no other way to survive.

Bringing people out of poverty by providing food and education will eventually lower the birth rate. People who are not living in poverty have fewer kids.

The food crisis is destabilizing governments. A hungry man is an angry man.

Sobering stuff.