25 posts categorized "Film and Photography"

What would we do without our moms to comfort us, guide us and love us? Here's to all mothers around the world -- including mine. Happy Mother's Day!

Photo 1 - Mother and child in Haiti: A mother and child sit in a meeting with Fonkoze, a micro-finance institution in Debriga, Haiti. Mothers brought their children to receive Vitamin A capsules on Wednesday, October 13, 2010. Nicole Cesar Muller led the discussion and gave the babies the vitamins, which were donated by Vitamin Angels. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

Photo 2 - Alli and André: Alli Morris, from Bend, OR, depends on SNAP, WIC, and other domestic feeding programs to care for her son André, who lives with a serious medical condition that affects his hormonal system. Photo by Brad Horn

Photo 3 - Neelum and Shuvam: Neelum Chand carries her son, Shuvam, 1, through the Nutrition Rehabilitation Home (NRH) in Dhangadhi, Nepal, after lunch on Sunday, April 29, 2012. The NRH, a project of the Rural Women's Development and Unity Centre, a Nepali NGO, works to restore malnourished children to health. Forty-one percent of Nepali children under age 5 are short for their age (stunted), according to the preliminary 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, and stunting is an indicator of malnutrition. Ensuring children are properly nourished in the 1,000 days between pregnancy and age 2 is vital to a child's development. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

Photo 4 - Guatemalan mother and daughter. Photo by Margaret W. Nea.

Photo 5 - Tohomina and Adia: Tohomina Akter bathes her daughter Adia, 17 months, at the neighborhood well in Char Baria village, Barisal, Bangladesh, on Thursday, April 19, 2012. Tohomina participates in a maternal and infant nutrition program called Nobo Jibon run in part by Hellen Keller International. The program stresses proper nutrition in the 1,000 days between pregnancy to age 2, with an emphasis on breastfeeding and cultivating home gardens. The goal is to encourage social and behavior change and prevent stunting in children. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

Photo 6 - Sharmila and Sanjana: Sharmila Chaudhari feeds her daughter Sanjana, 19 months, at the Nutrition Rehabilitation Home in Dhangadhi, Nepal, on Sunday, April 29, 2012. This Nutrition Rehabilitation Home (NRH) in the western part of the country is run by an NGO in Nepal called the Rural Women's Development and Unity Centre (RUWDUC). Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World.

Photo 7 - Janaki and Binti: Janaki Rana, 20, poses with her daughter, Binti Rana, 2, in Dhangadhi, Nepal, on Sunday, April 29, 2012. Janaki and Binti were once residents at the NRH in Dhangadhi, which is run by RUWDUC. Children and their mothers receive three follow-up visits after they leave the NRH. Photo by Molly Marsh/Bread for the World

Photo 8 - Mother and daughter in the United States: A mother and daughter enjoy a block party in Washington, DC. Photo by Crista Friedli/Bread for the World.

Photo 9 - Catherine and Laura: Laura Elizabeth Pohl, Bread's multimedia manager, at church with her mom, Catherine, in Newport News, VA. Photo courtesy of Laura Elizabeth Pohl.

Laura Elizabeth Pohl is multimedia manager at Bread for the World. You can follow her on Twitter at @lauraepohl.

Neelum Chand carries her son, Shuvam, 1, through the Nutrition Rehabilitation Home (NRH) in Dhangadhi, Nepal, after lunch on Sunday, April 29, 2012. The NRH, a project of the Rural Women's Development and Unity Centre, a Nepali NGO, works to restore malnourished children to health. Forty-one percent of Nepali children under age 5 are short for their age (stunted), according to the preliminary 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey. Stunting is an indicator of malnutrition, and ensuring children are properly nourished in the 1,000 days between pregnancy and age 2 are vital to a child's development. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

Ferries wait to transport people across the Payra River in southern Bangladesh, about six miles north of the Bay of Bengal, on Saturday, April 21, 2012. This area was devastated by Cyclone Sidr in 2007, the latest in a series of natural disasters that often hit the country due to its unique location. Bangladesh, inhabited by 150 million people in a land mass the size of Wisconsin, is in the largest river delta in the world. It could be the country with the most people to be negatively affected by climate change, which exacerbates threats to food security, according to a 2010 USAID report. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

When you think of food aid you likely think of Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia, not South Korea, Brazil and Germany. But the latter are all countries that once benefitted from U.S. international food aid programs and are now thriving economies.

Food aid works. These programs make up less than 1% of the U.S. federal budget and help millions around the world.

Watch the video below to learn more about these programs and how they help people from going hungry.

Laura Elizabeth Pohl is multimedia manager at Bread for the World. You can follow her on Twitter at @lauraepohl.

Photo caption: Somali woman and a malnourished child exit from the medical tent after the child receives emergency medical treatment from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an active regional peacekeeping mission operated by the African Union with the approval of the United Nations. Somalia is the country worst affected by a severe drought that has ravaged large swaths of the Horn of Africa, leaving an estimated 11 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. UN Photo/Stuart Price

+Learn more about our mini-campaign on international food aid programs!

It's her daughter's fifth birthday party and Heather Rude-Turner is being pulled in a dozen different directions.

There are burgers to prep, snacks to lay out, and visiting relatives to talk with, not to mention the homework she'll tackle after the party so she can receive her Bachelor's degree in a couple months. Heather's daughter, Naomi, and son, Isaac, are laughing as they jump around with two large balloons in the living room.

It's a scene that was unimaginable to Heather just a few years ago, when she left her abusive husband. She didn't have a job or a home but she eventually found both. Her church pitched in and so did the federal government, in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC. Without the EITC, Heather says, she wouldn't have made it back on her feet.

"Having that extra income, the EITC, gave me that extra cushion to take care of our basic needs and then save some away," said Heather, who used her most recent EITC check to pay bills and her college expenses.

In 2010, the EITC, which low-income workers apply for when they file their taxes, helped lift 5.4 million people out of poverty. Learn more about the EITC and Heather's story in the video below.

Laura Elizabeth Pohl is multimedia manager at Bread for the World. You can follow her on Twitter at @lauraepohl.

+Learn more about our mini-campaign on tax credits for low-income families.

The hoe falls in a rhythmic “thud, thud, thud” as Jane Sabbi and her sister-in-law hack at the undergrowth on Sabbi’s shaded, fertile vegetable farm. The sun is still rising in Kamuli, Uganda, and Sabbi has already cooked breakfast, washed the dishes, cleaned the goat and pig pens, and laid out several pounds of beans to dry. Still ahead: pounding amaranth, harvesting bananas, shelling beans, feeding the animals, and cooking lunch for her husband and seven children.

“I want to work hard, get enough money to educate the children to the university level and attain degrees,” said Sabbi. “That’s my hope and desire in life.”

Jane learned to plant more nutritious crops after joining a Ugandan nonprofit farming collective that receives U.S. foreign assistance. Globally, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen by 400 million since 2009. This is mostly the result of much hard work by poor people themselves, but U.S. foreign assistance has played an important role. Watch the video below to see how Jane Sabbi is working to create a brighter future for her family.

Photo caption: Jane Sabbi, a farmer in Uganda, learned to plant more nutritious crops like these beans after joining a Ugandan nonprofit farming collective that receives U.S. foreign assistance. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World.

Laura Elizabeth Pohl is multimedia manager at Bread for the World. You can follow her on Twitter at @lauraepohl.

+Send an email to Congress now and ask them to protect funding for poverty-focused foreign assistance.

+Learn more about the mini-campaign on poverty-focused foreign assistance for the 2012 Offering of Letters.

Globally, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen by 400 million since 1990. This is mostly the result of much hard work by poor people themselves, but U.S. foreign assistance has played an important role. 

Still, more than 900 million people around the world suffer from chronic hunger. These numbers are daunting, but U.S. poverty-focused foreign assistance saves lives and helps improve conditions for millions more by giving people the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty.

Funding for these programs comprises only 0.6 percent of the U.S. federal budget. Yet this small amount of money is crucial. Each year, U.S. poverty-focused assistance:

• can save more than 1 million lives by focusing on adequate nutrition during the 1,000-day window from pregnancy to age 2.
• provides medications that prevent more than 114,000 infants from being born with HIV, and provides counseling to more than 33 million people affected with HIV since 2004.
• saves 3 million lives through immunization.
• helps bring safe drinking water sources to poor communities, impacting 1.3 billion people over the last decade.

These programs don’t provide long-term handouts, but they fight systemic poverty and provide a chance for people to thrive. For example, a U.S.-funded project in Honduras successfully raised participating farmers’ purchasing power by 87 percent, compared to an 11 percent increase for non-participating farmers.

Funding these programs is not only the right thing to do, it also demonstrates U.S. leadership, protects our own national security and economic future, and helps create a more stable world by counteracting the desperation that can lead to political unrest, conflict, and extremism. These programs address the root causes of poverty, which helps ensure new markets for U.S. goods and services.

Check back on the Bread Blog every day this week for tips, stories, and resources on conducting an Offering of Letters at your church or community around poverty-focused foreign assistance.

Photo caption: Jane Sabbi farms some of her 12 acres of land in Kamuli, Uganda. This mother of seven children is a client of VEDCO, a Ugandan NGO that helps people improve agricultural practices and grow more nutritious food. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl

Molly Marsh is managing editor at Bread for the World.

+Send an email to Congress now and ask them to protect funding for poverty-focused foreign assistance.

+Learn more about the mini-campaign on poverty-focused foreign assistance for the 2012 Offering of Letters.

A new documentary about hunger in America called “Finding North” was screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT, and received excellent reviews from The Los Angeles Times and Variety Magazine. The film shows several families in the United States struggling with food insecurity, demonstrating the extensive reach of hunger in America. Bread for the World Institute was the first major investor in the film, before it was bought by Participant Productions, and David Beckmann appears in the film. I had a chance to interview the film's two directors, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, and asked them about their inspiration and what they learned about the complexities of hunger. Read their responses below, and watch the film trailer for a sneak peak at this exciting new documentary.  

What was the inspiration for making "Finding North"?

Lori Silverbush: I was mentoring a young girl named Sabrina whose family lived in a shelter. I was shocked to learn that her family frequently went hungry. In fact, I had inadvertently made her hungrier; I helped her get into a special private school for learning-disabled kids, but it didn't offer free breakfast or lunch, which I later learned were usually her only meals for the day. The principal of the new school called me to say that Sabrina was foraging in the trash for food. I couldn't believe it.

I knew there was hunger in this country, but until then it was an abstraction to me.

Kristi Jacobsen: Once I started researching the project, I realized how pervasive and insidious [hunger] is – affecting not just children, but also parents and community members. There’s this problem affecting everyone in such a negative way and yet the average American seems to be unaware of it. We couldn’t look away. This is a story that had to be told.

Prior to making this film, what did you know about hunger in America?

LS: I knew that hunger was a problem. I knew the statistics, though they didn't feel real to me. I had many misconceptions about hunger -- namely who went hungry. I had no idea the extent to which it was a growing working class issue. I learned an enormous amount about who goes hungry and where.

But most particularly, I learned why people go hungry in this country and that charity -- while vitally important in the absence of an adequate government safety net for hungry people and laws mandating a living wage -- is not a solution. Some problems are simply too big for the private sector to fix.

What was one particular subject or story line in the film that really impacted you?

KJ: I think that rather than mentioning a person, the town of Coburn, CO, had almost no one in the town that hadn’t been affected by hunger, including the chief of police, a cattle rancher who also works nights as the janitor of the school, and a family with a little girl, Rosie. We met her because her teacher told us that she had this one student who was struggling because she was hungry.

I think one of the poignant moments in our filming in Coburn was while interviewing the teacher, Leslie. She was doing a great deal to help kids and families suffering from hunger, and then during the interview, we discovered that she was also hungry as a child. You just don’t know how many people hunger is touching until you ask the questions and that’s what we sought to do as filmmakers.

Why is hunger a topic that people should be concerned about?  

LS: I think Dr. Martin Luther King said it best: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." If people are allowed to go hungry when we have the resources to feed them, what does that say about us as a nation? But if compassion and a sense of shared responsibility aren't enough to get people to care about hunger, then hopefully the economics are -- the effects of hunger cost our economy billions of dollars more than fixing it would. It's in every taxpayer’s financial best interest to end hunger, and soon.

KJ: People should see this film because the stories we tell will touch them and shock them, and I believe they’ll want to become a part of the solution. There is no one silver bullet to solving this problem, but there are a number of things that we, as a nation, can do. Our government needs to take responsibility, and we as individuals should take more responsibility by putting pressure on the government. We all have a role to play as a solution and we hope that the film will start a conversation.

Jeannie Choi is associate editor at Bread for the World. Follow her on Twitter @jeanniechoi.

 Being a mom is hard.

Now imagine being a mom and not being able to afford nutritious food for your only child, a smiley boy born with a severe health problem. Now add to that being homeless and 17 years old, and you might begin to imagine how Alli Morris feels.

Luckily, there are people and programs helping Alli and her son André. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) safeguards the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 by providing monthly packages of food that supply nutrients lacking in their diets. WIC has been an invaluable program for Alli and her son.

"André wouldn't be as healthy as he is without WIC because he wouldn't have had everything he needed when he needed it," said Alli, who graduated from high school in June 2011 and now works as a bank teller. "I don't think I would have been able to supply all that."

Watch the video below to learn more about Alli and André.

Photo caption: Alli Morris feeds her son, André. She's able to provide nutritious foods for André because of a U.S. government program that safeguards the health of low-income women, infants, and children by providing monthly packages of food that supply nutrients lacking in their diets. (Photo from video by Brad Horn for Bread for the World.)

Laura Elizabeth Pohl is multimedia manager at Bread for the World. You can follow her on Twitter at @lauraepohl.

+Learn more about the mini-campaign on domestic nutrition programs for the 2012 Offering of Letters.

Grammy Award winners The Civil Wars are receiving acclaim for their song with Taylor Swift, “Safe and Secure,” for the upcoming Hunger Games film, but many don't know that singing duo scored another film about hunger, the documentary Finding North, about hunger in America. [Stay tuned for my interview with the directors of Finding North, coming out Monday!]

In this interview below, Joy Williams and John Paul White, the artists behind The Civil Wars, talk about how they became involved in this groundbreaking documentary through the guidance of T Bone Burnett, one of the best producers in the music industry. “We could not have been more stoked about it,” John Paul White said.

It’s clear that hunger is an important issue for The Civil Wars. Joy Williams explains the importance of seeing a film like Finding North in order to understand the larger, systemic problems of hunger in America:

Forty-four million people go to bed hungry in America and don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and so [Finding North] highlights food insecurity in the United States, which basically means food deserts where people literally don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. [The film] definitely puts a face to what I would consider an epidemic in the United States.

It’s refreshing to hear Williams talk about hunger so knowledgeably and it’s my hope that their involvement in the documentary will get more people to watch the film, learn about hunger, and begin advocating for poor and hungry people in their communities.

Watch the interview with The Civil Wars below:

Jeannie Choi is associate editor at Bread for the World. Follow her on Twitter at @jeanniechoi.

+Learn how to advocate for poor and hungry people. 

Photo caption: Screenshot from Magnifier video.