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Football against hunger comes to a stadium near you
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012Bill Shankly, the late great Liverpool manager, once said: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that”.
Even the great Shankly himself couldn’t have known how true his famous phrase would turn out to be: during this weekend of Matches Against Hunger (Click here for the list of matches) the beautiful game can make the difference between life and death for millions of people. Read the full entry
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Today I had a fantastic guest whose name you surely know – Raúl González, the football star of Real Madrid and Schalke 04. He is goodwill ambassador for the campaign against hunger that the European Commission leads together with the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the European Professional Football Leagues. We just launched the campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the plight of hunger and the efforts to solve it.
We will focus the campaign on the Sahel region in Africa. I told Raúl about my recent trip to Niger and Chad, where 300,000 kids die from hunger-related diseases each year. Hunger will kill even more children in 2012 as a new food crisis looms. This is why we are acting now to prevent a bigger disaster. In this effort, the help of ambassadors like Raúl, like Hristo Stoichkov, like Roberto Baggio, is indispensable. Read the full entry
Number of views: 3281
An impressive gesture by the Irish
Monday, February 20th, 2012
With Minister Costello and Nora Owen, Chair of the Irish Aid Expert Advisory Group
By any stretch of the imagination this is an impressive gesture by the Irish. I am delighted but not surprised. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2974
Chad’s silent children – the sad face of malnutrition
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
In the city of Mao in Kanem province in Chad, there is a hospital we fund where the sound of silence on the children’s ward is chilling.
It’s strange to be with children who are so quiet. In the intensive care ward where they are treating babies for severe acute malnutrition there are fifteen mothers with their young children. In a few months time this number will soar but I am certain that the oppressive silence will remain the same. Read the full entry
Number of views: 1796
I met Rahi Harouna when she was making an important life decision – and getting moral support from what many may regard as a surprising source.
Rahi, a 38-year-old mother of five children, was at a health centre run by the aid agency Concern and funded by the European Commission in the village of Bambey, Niger. Read the full entry
Number of views: 1679
The 1000 day battle against child malnutrition
Friday, September 24th, 2010
Science tells us that the first 1000 days of a baby’s life are critical for its future. Good nutrition during these early days makes a huge difference to a child’s mental and physical health. In my part of the world access to food and health care is a birthright, but for millions of children born in poor countries it is not. This is what the 1000 days partnership to reduce child under-nutrition aims to change.
Joining this partnership was the most important goal of my trip to New York during the United Nations General Assembly. On September 21, a high level event “1000 Days: Change a Life, Change the Future – Partnering to Reduce Child Under-nutrition” co-hosted by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martins, brought together more than a hundred leaders from governments, the private sector and non-governmental organizations. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2554
With desertification spreading fast because of climate change, drought is affecting millions of people. This is particularly painful for Africa – because the continent has contributed least to climate change, but suffers from it the most. It is shocking, but true: droughts in Africa account for 95% of the death toll caused by natural disasters.
I was recently in Niger, one of the poorest and driest countries in the world, situated in the region of Sahel, a large stretch of mainly arid and semi-arid land. The population there has always been vulnerable to droughts, but not to the degree we witness today. Although average rainfall levels have remained steady, the arrival of rains has become less predictable, and they often come in very short and heavy bouts, which wash away seeds and destroy crops. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2049
