Ending Hunger, One Step at a Time

by oxfamcanada | October 17, 2014
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“I see the climate is changing a lot. Before it wasn’t like this.” Climate change is already having an impact on the ability of communities to feed themselves – communities like that of Virginia Ñuñonca, a farmer in the Peruvian highlands. Like many of the world’s more than 500 million family farmers, Virginia is experiencing increased impacts from climate change. Changing seasons and extreme weather are leading to droughts, flash floods and landslides.

Put simply, climate change is making people hungry.

But Virginia is not alone. Communities are coming together to feed people and fight climate change this week in celebration of World Food Day (16 October) and as part of GROW week (13–17 October).

  • In Canada, Oxfam campus groups held Pailwalker events, where supporters walked 6km with water buckets to show solidarity with women and girls from accross the world who walk that and more each day to get the water their families need to survive.
  • In Australia, over 500 community groups, schools and workplaces hosted a meal to raise money and to call on the Australian Government do its fair share to reduce hunger.
  • Activists in the Philippines are taking part in a ‘Climate Walk’ aimed at spurring action on climate change and climate disasters as they urged governments to ‘walk their climate talk’.
  • The group will walk 1,000 kilometers to arrive in Tacloban, ground zero for Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), on 8 November, exactly a year since the super Typhoon made landfall.
  • This week we’ve also been showing our support for Oxfam’s partners in El Salvador, who yesterday handed over a petition to legislators calling for the right to nutritious and available food.

While we wait for politicians to act, farming families continue to feel the impact of climate change. So we need to build an even stronger movement to create a future where everyone has enough to eat.

What you can do

Here’s what you can do: take our quiz to find out if you can make it as a farmer, and share it with your friends so they know we must act together!

 

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