What Can You Do About Hunger?

A terrible scourge

How Can You Get Involved? Thurow is working to produce series of materials to help guide congregations through issues surrounding hunger in Africa and the implications this has for people of faith. One strategy is for churches to devote a service to the issue, utilizing bulletin inserts, sermon starters, suggested hymns and children’s activities, as well as a 6 week, in-depth guide accompanying Thurow’s book. The study is suitable for an adult-led class or small group. It incorporates biblical texts and Christian principles as well as elements from a planned documentary film. The guide is designed to encourage discussion and to deepen a participant’s understanding of how starving families in the Third World is directly relevant to each of us.

^{Photo provided by Roger Thurow}

A terrible scourge

Giving the Opportunity “I wrote The Last Hunger Season because I wanted to take readers through a year in the lives of four Kenyan farmers and their families,” says Thurow. “I decided to follow farmers because I saw in them a desire to improve the quantity and the quality of the food they grow. I wanted my readers to see what I saw, to see the desire, the willingness, the yearning not to be lifted up, but to be given the opportunity to lift themselves up. Farmers throughout Africa are so willing to do their part, but they can’t do it without the support of their governments through increased investments in agriculture.”

^{Photo provided by Roger Thurow}

A terrible scourge

A contagious desire to help. “This disease of the soul will always be with me,” he writes. “This is one kind of disease I think needs to spread. There may be some who do not want to deal with this issue, but if we can inform others and have them embrace the issue in an optimistic way, we can really begin to see an end to world hunger. When enough people stop and realize it doesn’t have to be this way and that it is up to us, then that’s when it will stop. When enough people have been stricken by this disease, then world hunger will end. I would like to think my writing is one of the contagions that will spread the disease to others. That is my hope and prayer.”

^{Photo provided by Roger Thurow}