Global Malnutrition Increasing as Donations Decrease

May 3rd, 2011 by Angela

A determined band of social entrepreneurs has selected an admirable challenge indeed.. attacking global malnutrition.

Social entrepreneurs, according to Wikipedia, distinguish a social problem and utilize entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to achieve social change.

They are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most critical social problems. Ambitious and persistent, they take on major social issues and generate new ideas for wide-scale change.

Global malnutrition is a very pressing social problem. Data from the UN World Food Programme indicates that 925 million people don’t have enough to eat. More than 10.9 million kids under five die in developing countries apiece year. Hunger-related diseases and malnutrition cause 60 percent of those deaths.

Malnutrition is not just a measure of what we do or don’t eat. It is characterized by insufficient consumption of protein, energy and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and by frequent infections and diseases. If people are starved of the right nutrition they might die from common infections like measles and diarrhea.

Malnutrition therefore doesn’t just mean an inadequate intake of food, but an inadequate intake of foods containing the required nutrition. Lack of sufficient micronutrients in the diet affects almost two billion people worldwide. The World Health Organization states that deficiencies of iron, vitamin A, and metal rank among the top ten leading causes of death through disease in developing countries.

A major challenge in alleviating global hunger is how to fund and sustain programs which wage food relief. Without sustained, consistent, and growing funding, relief efforts are at the mercy of shifting economic conditions and the short-term efforts of governments and governmental organizations.

Recently, the global economic situation has negatively affected giving to charities. In the U.S.A. charitable giving fell by 3.2% in 2009, the largest percentage in five decades according to a study by the Giving USA Foundation. That comes after giving dropped 2.4% in 2008 during the first full year of the recession. Nationally, the Salvation Army saw a more than 8 percent decline, and this could mean even larger trouble for the people who depend on them. There’s word that many nationally known charities are in trouble.

In this situation of a growing need for food relief and decreasing charitable donations, social entrepreneurship programs might wage a solution.

An excellent example of social entrepreneurship being used to fight global malnutrition is this program by a company called Mannatech. In Mannatech’s “Give For Real” program, consumers not only fund the donation of nutritional products to the hungry by their own purchases, but receive products and income in return. That’s a tremendous incentive to support a worthy cause.

For more about this “donation through consumption” program and Mannatechs nutritional products go here.