World Hunger and the SFG Foundation

800 million people go to bed desperately hungry every night.

     In addition, depending on whose numbers you use, 15 to 50 million people die each year from starvation and malnutrition related diseases. Three fourths of these are children under the age of five. 

     Even if you use the most conservative figure of 15 million, that is over 41,000 people a day (30,000 of which are children under age five) die from the effects of starvation and malnutrition each and every day. That translates into a person dying about every 2 seconds somewhere in the world. So in just the  5 minutes it takes to read this, 150 people (over 100 children) die from the effects of hunger and that goes on every day of the year.    Kind of boggles the mind, doesn't it ?

     One may ask how can I possibly help, how can anyone or any group cope with that ?  Bad as it sounds, it is a battle that can be won. Today's rate is down about 40% from twenty years ago. But great as that is, it is still too slow. It would still take 80 years and hundreds of millions of lives to get down to under 2,000 deaths a day from effects of starvation.

We at the SFG Foundation believe

that we can help in a most significant way.

     Do you remember the old saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” ? We believe that the same can be accomplished by teaching a person to garden in a simple easy way that they can do, like the Square Foot Gardening method.

To that end we would like to announce our vision:

 TO ELIMINATE WORLD HUNGER,

  THROUGH THE USE OF SFG

     Now admittedly that is a very lofty vision, but you can't hit a target you don't aim at and this is truly " shooting for the stars ".  But even if we miss, we may hit the moon or beyond, and that's still a very worthy and worthwhile accomplishment.

     How are we going to do this ?  As you may or may not know the SFG is a non-profit foundation and we are seriously looking at the following ways as a means to accomplish our vision.

1.   A core of former missionaries from the Mormon Church are willing to go back to their former mission countries where they know the people, the area, how to live cheap and where the need is. Several we have talked to are ready to go back almost immediately, following training in the SFG methods and as soon as we could find them airfare and a monthly sponsor.

        The Missionaries have said that in these countries they could get by on as little as $100 a month and would be glad to go back for 6 to 12 months. Although we reside in Utah and are most familiar with the Mormon Church, the SFG Foundation is strictly non-denominational.  Perhaps your church, club or organization might be interested in sponsoring or starting such a worthwhile program.

2.   We are looking for people who can and have had success writing grants for projects like these. (Anyone who procures a grant for us would receive a percentage of the grant for his or her efforts) Do you know of anyone who could help here ?

3.    Benefactors and corporate sponsors.    We are looking for private benefactors and corporate sponsors to help with this work. It is sometimes much easier to obtain sponsors because it requires less red tape than grants. Again, anyone procuring benefactors and sponsors would receive a percentage for their efforts if they so desire.

4.    Aligning ourselves with organizations like Ameri-corps, Peace corps, Habitat for Humanity and other groups of a similar nature. Can anyone help us here ?

5.   Do any of you have any suggestions to help us accomplish our vision, which again is:   To Eliminate World Hunger through the use of the Square Foot Gardening Method.

  Please don't let your talents go to waste ! Communicate with us and let us know how you can help and what you'd be willing to do. Email us at info@squarefootgardening.com

Thank you for your interest and help.