The City That Ended Hunger

You're receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.

November 27, 2012

a project of ServiceSpace

I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for the minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

- Martin Luther King, Jr. -

The City That Ended Hunger

"To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help -- not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil's fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. 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." What follows is the story of how a city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something many places have yet to do: end hunger. { read more }