Should U.S. Citizens be Donating to Overseas Hunger Crisis?
There is a lot of poverty in the world. Almost every time you turn on the television there’s an advertising commercial asking for donations for hungry international children in poverty. There’s never a commercial for hungry children in America. Even though we have resources that other countries do not have, donating to overseas cause should come second to our own countries issues such as: our own child poverty. According to “(Coleman-Jensen 2013) ‘in 2012 14.5 percent of households (17.6 million households, approximately one in seven), were food insecure.’ People overseas do not have the resources we have here in the U.S. They have to walk miles just to get bucket of clean, maybe even filthy water. They do not have libraries and fast food restaurants to get free water. They do not have nutritious food to eat. Their perishables spoil and there are no resources to get food such as: grocery stores or food banks like churches and government pantries. We have food assistance (snap benefits), orphanages where children can at least have a roof over their heads and food on their plates, and shelters for homeless people to get a hot meal. International child hunger is a serious issue. We are one of the largest nations in the world. Without our help and donations countries with extreme hunger issues could potentially die off. However, according to the “(Census Bureau) ‘more than five children in the U.S. (15.75 million) lived in poverty in 2010’, that was four almost five years ago, and ‘more than 1.1 million children were added to the poverty population between 2009 and 2010 stated the Census Bureau’. In the U.S. there are always homeless people under bridges, on off ramps, and outside stores. Driving up seeing people less fortunate than you is depressing and heartbreaking. Most homeless people do have their children with them when they are panhandling. No one wants their children to see them struggling. Some people have their children with them. Lots of children poverty is not reported due to fact that there are children sleeping on the streets and hiding from the “system” trying to avoid being placed into harmful foster homes. Some of these children have never been in a real home before. This causes them to not have a place to live to be able to go to school. They need strength to be able to study and learn. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; lots of children in America can’t eat breakfast just because they don’t have it, or if they do eat breakfast they will not be able to eat later. No one is advertising for the children on the streets of the U.S. or the people under the bridge