Feel the Hunger Day :: Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011

On Feel the Hunger Day, anyone, anywhere is invited to experience for themselves the hunger that much of the world feels every day, by eating just half a cup of rice all day. That's the caloric equivalent of the food that the world's chronically hungry have to eat in an average day — an estimated 925 million people, or nearly 1 in 7 people on Earth.

Everyone is invited to take part. You can show your support by adding your names and comments on this website, on our Take Part page. If you're a Facebooker, you can also connect on our Facebook page. If you do decide to take part, we encourage you to post up a note here and on Facebook -- it's a means of raising awareness among family and friends.

There are no "rules" but here's how the day proceeds for many people who decide to take part in Feel the Hunger. Each participant can eat half a cup of rice, as measured uncooked -- which means a little more than a cup of cooked rice per person. Those taking part are encouraged to still eat as a family or group, cooking their half cups of rice together. At other times during the day when you might normally be sitting down to eat, we hope that those going hungry for this worthy endeavor take the time to reflect, pray or meditate.

As the day goes on, we invite participants to blog about thoughts and feelings on our Facebook page or our Take Part page>

If you take part on Dec. 7, you most likely will go to bed hungry that night -- no doubt happy to anticipate plenty of food the next day. That's not an option for the nearly 1 billion people who live with hunger every day.

What do we hope comes of this?

At minimum, we hope to raise awareness of hunger issues. But we hope the experience inspires participants to do something to help fight hunger. Here's one concrete action you can take, that won't actually cost you anything extra: Donate to a hunger relief organization the amount of money you might otherwise spend for food on Dec. 7. That might be just $5 or $10 -- but just think how much good we could do if thousands or millions of people all did that. We provide links to organizations we know and trust on our Help Fight Hunger page>