NGOs

The current food crisis was preceded by more than a decade of losses in the fight against world hunger and reached new depths as a result of last year’s food crisis, reported the United Nation’s anti-hunger agency.

While the world turned its attention and opened its pocketbooks to funding aid areas such as emergency relief, debt reduction, and improvement of government practices, it had been reducing investment in agriculture, explained the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

“In the fight against hunger, the focus should be on increasing food production,” FAO director-general Jacques Diouf told The Associated Press. “It’s common sense…that agriculture would be given the priority, but the opposite has happened.” more >>

Stop the Traffik and the United Nations are looking to mobilize young people in the global campaign to end human trafficking.

The Start Freedom campaign was launched at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday to help young people make a change for trafficked peers.

It offers resources, including lesson plans, that teachers and students can use to explore the issues surrounding trafficking and what they can do to help put a stop to it. more >>

Many Christian colleges across the nation on Thursday have called on their students to pray and fight for the end of extreme poverty and injustice in observance of World Vision’s Day of Prayer and Action.

The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, an association of 180 higher education Christian institutions around the world, partnered this year with global humanitarian group World Vision to promote the day of prayer and action for poverty among college students.

For 25 years, World Vision has dedicated Oct. 1 as an organization-wide time of prayer for the issue. Meanwhile, Oct. 1 also marks the beginning of Christian Higher Education Month. more >>

Christian relief groups are working with local partners and government officials to feed victims of Atlanta’s devastating floods and to assemble volunteer teams to help with recovery efforts.

Operation Blessing International reported Wednesday that it deployed teams earlier in the week to provide immediate strategic relief, such as emergency food distributions and daily hot meals from its mobile kitchen, to flood victims in the Atlanta area.

Efforts are also underway to identify the hardest hit communities in need of cleanup and recovery effort, OBI noted. more >>

As firefighters battle raging flames in Southern California, The Salvation Army is on the ground helping survivors get through the days in public shelters.

Thousands of residents have been forced into shelters by The Station fire, the largest of California’s multiple fires, which engulfed more than 100,000 acres within a few hours Monday. Fire officials issued evacuation notices to 10,100 residents whose homes were under threat by Monday afternoon.

"This is a very difficult firefight," said Mike Dietrich, the U.S. Forest Service’s incident commander, according to CNN. "This is a very angry fire that we're fighting right now. Until we can get a change in weather conditions, I'm not overly optimist." more >>