Canadian Foodgrains Bank is encouraging the public to join them in a day of prayer to help them address the hunger crisis the world is experiencing in honour of World Good Day.

World Food Day occurs every year on October 16 and aims to bring awareness around the world to the global hunger crisis. It hopes to draw people's attention to the crisis and to seek change and action.

"There are over 800 million people facing hunger right now," says public engagement manager, Arisnel Mesidor. "Unfortunately there are some major drivers to that crisis and one of them is climate change, another one of them is crop failure for all kinds of reasons and one of them has to do with some actions or inactions from the part of people in governments, both in our country and in other countries."

It is discussed within non-profit organizations that there is actually enough food for the entire world, however, due to unfair distribution, not everyone receives the same portions of food. Mesidor calls this the food system. It's a system that controls how food is produced, how it's moved around, and how it's processed. The system does not favour equal distribution, so organizations such as the Canadian Foodgrains Bank are pushing back against the system by giving food to those in need.

The work that the Canadian Foodgrains Bank does takes a lot of effort and support, and Mesidor says that they use four types of actions to make a difference.

"One is to give, obviously to give, to share what we have with those who don't. The second one is to learn because we do believe that people need to know what's going on going on so that they can take action. If they don't know, then they don't know and if they don't know they will not be able to take action. We also have something called advocacy. When we talk to government elected officials to bring awareness among them about what's going on and to encourage them to enact pieces of legislation that will help people facing this kind of situation. The fourth action to which we call people is praying and this is fundamental, this is important."

To stress the significant impact that prayer has, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank is hosting a National Prayer Gathering on October 16 at 5:30 p.m. CDT which will focus on praying for all kinds of topics.

"They will be praying for the NGOs* that sometimes have to go through dangerous, difficult situations to reach people in need of help. We will pray for the people we are serving, and ultimately would like them to be able to become fishers. That's why we have livelihood programs and projects with people helping them to become self-sufficient when it comes to food. But also we will be calling on people to pray for ourselves and to have what we have to ask for God's help to be better stewards of what we have at our disposal."

Anyone wishing to join the Canadian Foodgrains Bank in their National Prayer Gathering can visit its website. 

*Non-government organization

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