Dr. Doug Coutts is a professor at Auburn University and was sent there by the United Nation’s ‘World Food Programme” to start a hunger-issue curriculum across the various disciplines and colleges. This is vanguard stuff as he works with Drs. June Henton and Harriet Jiles of Auburn who have started “Universities Fighting World Hunger.”
Dr. Coutts has lived the vast majority of his professional career abroad working with the World Food Programme. He is a wonderful man with a passion and ability to articulate global issues of hunger. One piece of advice that he gave me was this: “Whatever you do to eliminate hunger, it must always be coupled with building capacities in that country.”
So just feeding hungry people, while it is a great and noble thing, is not good enough if there is not some long term strategies involved to insure the next generation doesn’t need helping being fed, too. That’s why we are so excited about our food getting into school feeding programs in foreign countries. A child will go to school if they know they can eat. A parent will send their child to school for the same reason. And a child learns to read and write, and capacities are built. It is the most effective way of ending hunger there is available.