Inspiring stuff found on the intrawebs ver. 1.0

[Rev. Rowan Redbeard]

http://zenpencils.com/comic/carl-sagan- ... this-life/

[black bart]

^Ahhh table tennis...I am crap at it...but I love it.

[Rev. Rowan Redbeard]

The City that Ended Hunger
A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.

Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

<snip>

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

<snip>

Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal. When Anna and I ate in one, we saw hundreds of diners—grandparents and newborns, young couples, clusters of men, mothers with toddlers. Some were in well-worn street clothes, others in uniform, still others in business suits.

“I’ve been coming here every day for five years and have gained six kilos,” beamed one elderly, energetic man in faded khakis.

“It’s silly to pay more somewhere else for lower quality food,” an athletic-looking young man in a military police uniform told us. “I’ve been eating here every day for two years. It’s a good way to save money to buy a house so I can get married,” he said with a smile.

No one has to prove they’re poor to eat in a People’s Restaurant, although about 85 percent of the diners are. The mixed clientele erases stigma and allows “food with dignity,” say those involved.

<snip>

The result of these and other related innovations?

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The cost of these efforts?

Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.

Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social mentality”—the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of us have access to good food, so—like health care or education—quality food for all is a public good.”

The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food- ... ded-hunger

[gronank]

The City that Ended Hunger
A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.

You can't do anything like that in the U.S, it would go against everything the cult of deserving stands for.

[Roland Deschain]

Wow, that sounds like a great project. Social programmes like this should be par for the course, not exceptions to the rule. It's so very true that the benefits from showing such altruism go beyond the immediate and into the long-term, shaping the attitude of generations to come for the better. I will never understand the backlash against social welfare and medicine so prevalent in certain parts of the world today.

[PKMKII]

[Almighty Doer of Stuff]

There's nothing inspiring about encouraging body dysmorphic disorder. Tsk tsk tsk.

Poor rhinoceros...

[Mad Willyum Bonney]

^

[pieces o'nine]

VOTE PIECES O'NINE FOR POPE AND CHOOSE YOUR BIRETTA STYLE AND COLOR

[black bart]

That's it...I'm joining the campaign...I just can't decide on the colour.

[DavidH]

I trust Pieces will approve, I have carried the Pieces for Pope campaign across to the Monastery, also to the Happy Atheist Forum. I will e-mail a list of usernames to the Vatican when complete.

[black bart]

david H wrote:

I will e-mail a list of usernames to the Vatican when complete.

I'll be hiding in my priest's hole!

They'll never take me alive!

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

I'll be hiding in my priest's hole!

They'll never take me alive!

I suppose that's preferable to having a priest hiding in your hole...

[pieces o'nine]

ET has priest holes hidden all over Maine, cleverly disguised as privvies...

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

Yarrr, and ye'll nivver find em, me pretty!!

I use them like the little boxes Thing used on the Addams Family TV show back in the day - go in this one, come out of that one - much cheaper than buying gas!