For this year's season of Lent, the Pope is asking Catholics to reflect upon a very particular demographic; the one billion people in the world who suffer from starvation everyday.
Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes explained this years message of Lent.
Card. Paul Josef CordesSharing this misery is done in favor of those who need it most.
Fasting during Lent, is encouraged by the Church, and something that executive director of the World Food Program sees as an empathetic reminder of those who are forced to live hungry.
Josette Sheeran
Executive Director, World Food Program
We feel it's a very appropriate thing, that is people who can afford food choose to give it up for their own spiritual reasons that they think about those who have to give it up everyday and feel that pain of hunger everyday. And so, it's a time when perhaps that feeling can translate into compassion and action against hunger.The World Food Program is the largest humanitarian organization in the world. Its mission revolves around the organization's cornerstone idea that no person should be deprived of nutrition. They often work with Catholic organizations worldwide to get food to the places that need it the most.
Josette Sheeran's commitment to fighting world hunger led her to start the Fill The Cup campaign, named after a small red cup used to feed porridge to millions of children in schools around the world. Sheeran calls the effort a human rights program because it goes beyond the issue of hunger.
Josette Sheeran
Executive Director, World Food ProgramIf we provide a cup of food in school, it is a human rights program for girls. Girls are sent to school by their parents. And, in fact, in Pakistan half of the children in the classroom where we serve food are girls. But also, it's an anti child labor action. Because children now can get the food they need.
Even in the face of a global recession, the World Food Program is not letting hunger take a back seat to the world's waning economy. They WFP is calling for .7% of all stimulus packages to be dedicated exclusively to fighting world hunger. Because without international help, says Sheeran, the results could be fatal.
Josette Sheeran
Executive Director, World Food Program
Our message is, well, we know it's a hard time. Don't forget the people that live in places with no streets. We have to keep up our generosity, because they will not survive without our help.In the meantime, Sheeran and the World Food Program will continue to fill the cup.
