Friends support IF campaign

Quakers join Big IF events in London and Belfast

More than two hundred charities are supporting the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign. It urges world leaders, who gathered in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, this week for the G8 conference, to tackle the problem of global hunger.  Friends travelled from all over Britain to attend the Big IF event in Hyde Park in London on Saturday 8 June and, in Northern Ireland, Quakers were among the eight thousand people at an event in Belfast’s Botanic Gardens organised by the IF campaign last weekend.

Gerald Conyngham, of Exeter Meeting, was one of many Quakers at the huge gathering in Hyde Park.

He said: ‘Two months ago Exeter Quaker Meeting signed up to support the campaign, which focuses on tackling tax evasion, increasing development aid and stopping land grabs in developing countries. 

‘Four of us went up from Exeter Meeting and, whilst on the march from Westminster to Hyde Park and then at the rally, we were approached by Quakers from eight other Meetings.’

The IF campaign asks: If the world produces enough food for everyone, why are children still dying needlessly of hunger? The campaign is the largest coalition of its kind in the UK since Make Poverty History in 2005, when Britain last held the G8 presidency. This time the organisers are pushing for more radical change.

Although the main focus is on hunger and malnutrition, the campaign focuses more on addressing the underlying causes of hunger, such as ‘land grabs’, tax avoidance and a lack of transparency over investments in poor countries.

Today, despite huge strides in reducing poverty and hunger over the past ten years, one in eight people still go to bed hungry every night, and each year 2.3 million children die from malnutrition.

In a report published to coincide with the launch, Enough Food for Everyone IF, campaigners estimate that twenty-eight per cent of children in developing countries are underweight or stunted.

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