Poor Food Day 2010

[2ndRateMind]

This idea was sparked off on the BBC Food and Drink forum.

Basically, we noticed that while obesity is an issue in the developed world, 80 million people are severely malnourished in the third world, and in danger of starvation. So, the idea is to have a food solidarity day, where we lucky, comfortable, well-fed people in the developed world limit ourselves to a third world diet for one day. The money we save from foregoing our normal fare gets donated to the charity of our choice.

It's a viral thing; we are building a website, but basically the idea is for people to decide for themselves what to eat, and how much to donate, and who to donate to.

And it's an idea in it's early stages; if you can contribute clever suggestions that might get the concept across to loads of people, please post them.

Poor Food Day 2010 is scheduled for Wednesday, 17 February 2010, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and the day after pancake day.

Oh, and suitable recipes would be good, too.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

[Rosendula]

It might be worth contacting your local Development Education Centre (you can find your nearest one on the DEA website . They may be able to help get the word out.

[MuddyWitch]

We used to do summat similar to this in the 1970's. It was called 'starvation lunch' & you went without lunch & donated your dinner money to Oxfam to help feed those in the third world. The idea was that you not only helped those less fortunate than yourself but also suffered hunger, albeit just for one afternoon. Not sure if this was a national thing or just organised at my school.

MW

[red]

We used to do summat similar to this in the 1970's. It was called 'starvation lunch' & you went without lunch & donated your dinner money to Oxfam to help feed those in the third world. The idea was that you not only helped those less fortunate than yourself but also suffered hunger, albeit just for one afternoon. Not sure if this was a national thing or just organised at my school.

MW

still do that round here

[2ndRateMind]

It might be worth contacting your local Development Education Centre (you can find your nearest one on the DEA website . They may be able to help get the word out.

Thanks for that. I emailed someone last night; I'll let you know if I get any response.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

[Annpan]

In school we would do a 24 hour sponsored fast for the third world.

There was also a 'rich man poor man' lunch - everyone paid £2, 90% were given a small bowl of plain rice, 10% were given a 3 course meal with all the trimmings.

[invisiblepiper]

Will pass this on - and dig up some recipes too!

[2ndRateMind]

Just to say I have had a response to my email, and it was jolly useful. I'll fill you all in when I have a bit more time.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

[2ndRateMind]

Well, I just thought I'd fill you all in on the email I had from the guy at the local International Development Agency.

He thinks it's a good idea but:

He's not sure about the name Poor Food Day. If you can think of a better one, let me know.
He's not sure about the date of Ash Wednesday 2010. He thinks Christians may be fasting on the first day of Lent anyway, and is worried that might reduce the impact. I'm not sure about this; it seems to me that it might be synergetic, rather than conflicting. But again, if you think it would work against us, and have a better suggestion for a date, say so.

He thinks that we need 4 - 5 'partner' charities, so we can weblink to their donations page, and in some technological way I haven't sussed yet, get some idea of the click-throughs and donations we are generating. I shall be contacting OXFAM, Christian Aid and War on Want next week, but if anyone has other suggestions let me know. If there is a Catholic around when we need one, and who wants to evangelise CAFOD, that would be useful, too.

Finally, he thinks schools would be a good prospect for the project. I'm not best placed to chase this one, so if anyone wants to tackle PR among schools and colleges let me know. But don't forget to keep it international; we want the entire developed world in on this.

It occurs to me that 'alternative' (ie, veggie, vegan, organic) restaurants might also be a good prospect for us. They might take the money for a normal meal, in exchange for a 3rd world lunch or dinner, donating the sum of the difference to their charity. If anyone wants to take this on, also let me know. Ditto re internationalism.

Any other suggestions (a Come Dine With Me special maybe?) feel free to post.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

[Amaranth]

Great idea!

Name ideas:
Feed a Starving Child Day
£1 or $1 or 1 euro a Day for Food
Dining with the Poor Day
Food Poverty Awareness Challenge
World Food Poverty Day
Every Grain of Rice
Enough Food for All Day


To me the date is fine. Often people are looking for a project like this for lent, so perhaps more would join in. Having it a later time might make it possible for people to forage more food though if you want to encourage that as a money saver/nutrition gainer. If you ever wanted to have it in the northern hemisphere fall, timing it to coincide with Ramadan or just before Diwali might work.

A website for a similar one in the past is
http://www.2dollars.org/
And there is a facebook group for Dan's London group as well.
They do it for a whole week so people have £9.10 or $14 to work with (The £9.10 was set the year he first started the challenge based on the UN's data on number of people living on $2 a day or less and reflected that year's exchange rate. People use the $2 for everything, but Dan figured $2 for food was enough of a challenge at UK prices) . Dan has been considering changing the date for 2009 to something that would work well with allotment harvesting.

Karla is eating on $1 a day a person for the month of April to help raise money for an aid project in Zambia.
http://1-dollar-a-day.blogspot.com/
To add to the challenge they are eating Zambian style foods.

Is there a website started for the challenge yet?

One thing that might inspire people would be to pick a country with a lot of food poverty and research the typical foods that the poor have access to and typical dishes. In order for it to work for the challenge the foods that are least expensive for them would need to match fairly with foods that are inexpensive in the UK. This would give a focus for collecting recipes for the website. I'd vote for Chinese or Indian food as both center around frugal whole foods such as rice, legumes, and fresh vegetables. But it would also work to focus on traditionally grown frugal UK foods (barley, oats, peas, fava beans, leaks, onions, carrots, etc).

Alternatively people could eat on one day's food from the Darfur family (Aboubakar) living in the Chad refugee camp in the Hungry Planet book. People could join together to get the food in bulk to save money.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5005952

Other good places for the money to go would be for groups that help people learn to garden self sufficiently or do permaculture. Sponsoring some students or a teacher would have an impact that would spread throughout the community the students came from or where the teacher did large group classes.
http://www.growbiointensive.org/
http://www.permaculture.org.uk/