The Food/Fuel Crisis:  Can you feel it? Can you solve it?

Jim Gulley, Conference Secretary of Global Ministries, has written this about the food/fuel crisis:
At this very moment, soaring FOOD and FUEL prices are taking a toll on hundreds of millions of people at home and abroad. Some have no margin to adjust.

Food pantries in your community cry out for new food stocks to feed the daily increase of hungry people.

Residents of Haiti's Cité Solé with no access to food fill unfed stomachs with "mud" patties sprinkled with sugar to silence the wrenching roar of their guts, at least temporarily.

Others in the Two-Thirds World spend 50-80% of their meager wages ($1.00/day) to feed their families.
In Myanmar (Burma) Cyclone Nargis took more than 120,000 lives, destroyed entire villages and devastated the livelihoods of millions of survivors.

Join others to fight back the food/fuel crisis! Here is a 3-pronged strategy:

 1)    Feed the hungry in your community every week.  Go to your nearest food pantry and find out what they need.  Make a commitment to "tithe your weekly grocery tab". If you spend $100.00 a week on groceries, buy $10.00 of items requested by your food pantry. Offer these in-kind tithes (cash from the forgetful) at the altar during the offertory each week. Make feeding the hungry be central, not peripheral, to worship.

2)    Partner with UMCOR to feed the hungry in crisis and equip resource-poor farmers to feed themselves and their neighbors. www.umcor.org

3)    Learn what are the underlying causes of the food/fuel crisis. Join Bread for the World, a Christian group that works to influence U.S. food policies. Help reshape policies that will reduce U.S. dependence on oil and will create opportunity and hope for people in the Two-Thirds World to produce and/or access the basic food they need - not just to survive, but to grow and flourish. Read about Bread for the World's Recipe for Hope campaign and get involved!

Together, we can make a difference in the lives of the hungry in our communities, throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Take action today! 

-Jim Gulley, Conf Sec. Global Ministries, [email protected]