A coalition of Christian groups, including the Bible Society, is launching a new campaign aimed at highlighting global poverty and corruption.
A total of 1.6 billion people have no access to clean drinking water, and 29,000 children die from preventable diseases daily, according to Exposed, a campaign to address poverty and corruption. (Photo: FoodForThePoor.org)
"$1 trillion goes missing each year due to corruption," said Dion Forster at the African Biblical Leadership Initiative forum in Uganda.
"Yet just 1 percent of the world's global income would be sufficient to eradicate extreme poverty. There is enough for all of us on the earth to live well. So why are we poor?" asked Forster, who is from South Africa.
"As a Christian I have a responsibility to do something about the hunger around the world."
The new campaign, called Exposed, aims to challenge the global church, businesses and governments to highlight the impact of corruption on the poorest of the poor. It claims:
- A total of 854 million people are undernourished. Annually, North Americans spend about $558 billion on take-out food and $33 billion on weight-loss products. Yet a child dies every five seconds due to hunger-related causes.
- A total of 1.6 billion people have no access to clean drinking water, and each day 29,000 children die from preventable diseases.
- A total of $25 billion a year would be enough to give life-saving medical services to every low-income country.
Forster said the church must be mobilized into action. He quoted John Wesley, who said, "There can be no personal holiness without social holiness."
The Exposed campaign plans to gather 100 million signatures to present to the world's economic leaders at the G8 summit. The campaign gets under way in October, but the website petition is already live.