Global Hunger Games

i-ee19b290d178c0961afffebd4910881b-hunger-games-thumb-377x534-73569.png
Hunger Games - World Food Programme.

Hunger Games portrays a grim future in which the "bottom 99%" must ration their food to reduce the chance that their children will be sent as "tributes" to compete in a game to the death.

But -

What if, together, we can identify thousands of new paths out of poverty around the world in just 48 hours?

Imagine thousands of Katniss Everdeen-inspired avatars battling hunger - for real.

{Today} the Rockefeller Foundation and the Institute for the Future (IFTF) will join forces with people across the globe and ask them to help solve global poverty through an interactive online game. The game, dubbed Catalysts for Change, is based on the premise that collaboration on a global scale can yield unique insights into ways to create a more prosperous, equitable future. These insights will trigger innovations that will make a significant difference in the lives of poor or vulnerable communities. The game can be played online at game.catalyze4change.org.

This is one online game I really want my own children to play! Release the Avatars!

More like this

So with the return of spring comes the return of Occupy, which by and large, is probably a good thing.  OWS deserves some props for drawing attention to inequity, for bringing radicalism back, and for showing a very complacent corporate and political leadership that the people still have bite in…
From the Japan Times: Former Irish President Mary Robinson’s foundation for climate justice is hosting a major conference in Dublin this week. Research presented there said that rising incomes and growth in the global population, expected to create 2 billion more mouths to feed by 2050, will drive…
This is an image from the video game Asheron's Call 2 (source: mmorpg.com). Does playing such a game, involving regular practicing (albeit in a virtual environment) of repetitive, violent acts, increase our general level of aggression? A recent article in New York Times says no, citing a study by…
I talked before about how I think the Internet represents the possibility for Alternaworlds -- worlds facilitated by social interaction on the Internet with their own rules and standards. Well, this World of Warcraft business may be rapidly careening out of control, but it is beginning to fulfill…

How about sending sterilisation programmes to starving people instead of food aid programmes?

As long as I've been alive, there have been famines in Africa that the rest of us are made to think are our problem to solve. Sending them food has been going on all this time and it hasn't helped. They just need to stop breeding.

European countries have long ago reached zero population growth.
Or, they would have if it wasn't for no-hopers from countries where people are breeding beyond their capacity to support their population migrating to Europe illegally.

You can't solve a problem if you ignore its key elements.

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 03 Apr 2012 #permalink

@Vince Whirlwind - that is the most poorly informed and downright racist argument you could have put down in response. European countries have long ago reached zero population growth because they created the social conditions within which families, especially mothers, would consider having less children:

1. The safety nets to catch them in their old age, instead of nothing so you have to rely on kids and family to look after you
2. Opportunities for women to get educated and enter the workforce instead of continual marginalisation and discrimination of women through the very structure of society
3. A culture of plenty with cheap food rather than food shortages and expensive foods that no -one can afford.

And the rest...

What's more, European countries could do all this largely at the expense of the development of African and many other nations. To add injury to injury, it is our very own European economic, political and international relations policies that keep these countries exactly where our powers want them - poor.

So, before you propagate social control policies that are at their best hypocritical and at their worst immoral and then some, learn your history, visit a developing country and look around the world from any vantage point than your own highly privileged and, no doubt, very caucasian one.