Saturday 17th October 2009

Child Poverty

While the GVN Foundation is committed to helping children around the world break free from childhood poverty, funds raised through the 2008 Eat So They Can event will specifically focus on the plight of children in the African programs that GVN currently supports in: Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Ethiopia.

Global Poverty

piggies Chronic poverty is cyclical: children who suffer from childhood poverty statistically will continue the cycle into adulthood. By addressing the immediate needs of food, clothing and shelter as well as addressing long term sustainability goals with schooling opportunities and skills training for some of the world's most poverty stricken youth, it is the hope of the GVN Foundation that we can begin to break the cycle of childhood poverty.

  1. Every day, 25,000 people die because of hunger; 18,000 of them are children.
  2. The World has produced more then enough food to feed itself since the 1960's, yet around the world, over 850 million people are chronically hungry.

Why Africa?

ghana Many African countries are still battling extremely high poverty rates associated with poor infrastructure, warfare, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

  1. In Kenya, 52% of the population lives below the poverty line, and 22.8% live on less than US $1 a day.
  2. According to the 2006 United Nations AIDS Report, by the end of 2005 1.1 million Kenyan children had lost a mother, father, or both parents to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
  3. HIV/AIDS is changing the profile of rural poverty in Africa. It puts an unbearable strain on poor rural households, where labour is the primary income-earning asset. About two thirds of the 34 million people in the world with HIV/AIDS live on the African continent.
  4. Those disadvantaged people living in rural Eastern and Southern Africa comprise an area that has one of the world's highest concentrations of poor people. The incidence of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing faster than the population.
  5. Rural poverty is deepening in Eastern and Southern Africa, where most of the region's 130 million poor people live in rural areas. Ten of the 21 countries in the region have an average annual per capita income of less than US$400.

Meet some of GVN Foundation's African Partners

Employing the strategy of 'local solutions to local problems' GVN and the GVN Foundation partner with local grass root organizations to implement sustainable development projects.

To learn more about the GVN Foundation's partners that will benefit from Eat So They Can funds, please visit the links below.

  1. Kenya
  2. Uganda
  3. Ethiopia
  4. South Africa