Image: daveblume (Flickr)
World Vision’s 40 Hour Famine campaign continues its 38 year-old battle against extreme hunger and poverty in developing countries this weekend.
The campaign, aimed at young Australians, helps reduce global deaths from starvation, which took the lives of almost seven million people in the last year.
Despite raising over $344 million in last year’s campaign, the number of sponsored children has decreased between 2010 and 2012.
World Vision Campaign Manager, Jon Soderland, sees the reduction as a “change in the charity landscape”, and is confident that young people will continue to assist the nine million undernourished people worldwide, through his organisation.
“I come in contact with supporters and donors of the 40 Hour Famine all the time, and I’m completely blown away by their levels of commitment and passion,” Mr Soderlund said.
The campaign has expanded its guidelines to participants to make their own choice of sacrifice between Friday August 16 and Sunday August 18; whether it is food, social media and technology or other luxury items.
Mr Soderland says despite the major demographic for the charity aged between 13 and 16 years-old, it does not rely on celebrity endorsements, competitions or trends, insisting that people respond better to human stories.
“Young Australians respond to a genuine story, and I think that’s what we have been giving them; something that moves the staff as much as it moves the donors,” he said.
Professor of Global Health at Melbourne University, Rob Moodie, is heartened by the number of Australians that continue to get involved with campaigns such as the 40 Hour Famine.
“I’m for anything that can bring us closer together as a globe, and diminish the fear and misunderstanding, and increase out support for each other,” Mr Moodie said.
Professor Moodie is wary of campaigns that fail to educate and inform financial donors.
“I think as long as they’re done respectfully, and not done to just raise money, then they’re of value. I think just raising money without understanding, has a limited value,” he said.
40 Hour famine participant, Jason Wu, who has not eaten since Sunday, says forty hours are not enough to really empathise with poverty-stricken people.
“40 hours of starving is such a first-world thing; considering the fact that you’re going to be having water as well, compared to people in Africa and the starving kids, who go days without food and only have access to dirty water,” Mr Wu said.
The passionate student, 19, is supportive of the initiative but is wary of the potential for harm from intervening too much in the agricultural processes in developing countries.
“I think giving poor people food is noble, but they need to do it without holding them back from developing.”
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