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Over
800 million people in the world are chronically hungry,
including 5 million children under age 5 who will die from
malnutrition this year. Someone dies from hunger or hunger-related disease nearly
every three seconds. A child dies every five seconds (U.N.
World Food Programme). The
statistics on hunger are so incomprehensibly enormous,
they nearly overwhelm us into complacency: The problem is
just too big. Nothing can be done.
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Women and men gathered on an Ethiopian hillside. Photo
by Kathryn Sime, ELCA |
But
when these statistics become people, when the statistics
have names and faces, it becomes much harder to ignore the
problem. Fortunately, the names and the faces bring stories
of hope. Their stories become our stories — because we are
truly partners in seeking an end to hunger.
I was
traveling with colleagues from the ELCA and the
Lutheran
World Federation (LWF) program in Ethiopia. We were visiting
a group of about 30 community members of all ages who
were sharing their stories.
“But why aren’t you married?”
was a question I might expect to hear at a family wedding,
but not here on an Ethiopian hillside. One of the women
asked me about my life as an American woman — was I married?
Did I work? How were domestic chores divided? How many
children did I have?
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Women and
men in Ethiopia. Photo by Kathryn Sime, ELCA. |
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Since I had been accustomed
to being the interviewer and not the interviewee, her
question took me by surprise. I explained about my job,
where I lived, that I am 33 years old, with no children and
no husband. More than a few eyebrows were raised at that
one, prompting the most vocal woman in the group to query me
further: What was the advantage of not being married?
I didn’t want to
over-simplify the importance of my being able to choose my own
path in life. Yet I also knew the critical inroads that LWF
staff, many of them Ethiopian themselves, had made in
engaging communities in conversation about the importance of
delaying marriage for girls so that they would continue in
school. Girls who are educated tend to marry later, have
fewer children, have healthier children, and experience
significantly less severe poverty in their families.
Education of girls and women is one proven factor in breaking the cycle of
hunger and poverty.
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