40,000 PEOPLE DIE OF STARVATION DAILY

Every day, stories of tragic accidents make the front page of the newspaper, such as graphic descriptions of a school bus accident that killed eight kids or a fatal fire that wiped out an entire family.

Every day, thousands of children worldwide die from hunger, but they don't generate many front-page headlines.

Some kids are hoping to change that.

"It would be incredible if just one day all over the world, all the newspaper headlines read, `40,000 people died today from hunger, and they'll die tomorrow, too, unless we do something about it,' " said activist Heidi Hattenbach. Her statistics come from the book Kids Ending Hunger by Tracy and Sage Howard, which estimates that 40,000 children die each day from hunger-related causes.

"The problem is so huge and so ongoing, when that bus accident killed several children, it's a one-time event," said fellow activist Jennifer Rotermund. "It startles us all, and then we go on the next day and everything is fine again. But when you have 40,000 children dying every day, yesterday, today, tomorrow, next week, it's not news anymore. It's ongoing and it's hard to grasp that number. It's just not as important. It's not so startling when it happens day in and day out."

Projects to end hunger

Children's Express recently conducted phone interviews with 18-year-old Rotermund from New York and 21-year-old Hattenbach from Oregon, two members of Youth Ending Hunger - a youth branch of the international Hunger Project, which is committed to ending hunger by the year 2000.

Youth Ending Hunger members can be seen riding their bikes across the United States, jumping out of airplanes, sorting food at food banks and lobbying politicians to get their point across.

Started as an after-school club in the United States eight years ago, it has evolved into an international organization with branches in 60 countries committed to ending hunger and bettering the lives of children all over the world.

Through fund-raising projects, Hattenbach's group has raised as much as $5,000, with 100 percent going to the Hunger Project. All Youth Ending Hunger branches are united in a national monthly conference call led by one of their members.

Fund-raising for the organization takes place year-round and can take many forms.

"A couple of summers ago, a group of my friends and I bicycled across the United States to raise money and awareness for hunger and to lobby," Hattenbach said. "And we really made a difference by talking to governors and congressmen and by raising money.

"Other schools have bake sales," she said. "There's people who have jumped out of airplanes with parachutes and raised money that way.

"Ending hunger doesn't have to be a drag, it doesn't have to be a burden," Hattenbach added. "It could be a way to express your creativity and to have fun with your friends while also doing something good."

Adults interested, too

The organization has interested adults as well as kids in the problem of world hunger.

At the September 1990 World Summit for Children, 71 heads of state gathered for the sole purpose of giving children worldwide better opportunities to live full lives without worrying about hunger. It was the first time the leaders agreed to take action against hunger.

As a response to the summit, a four-day Global Youth Conference was held in Kyoto, Japan, and attended by Rotermund and 355 youths from 60 countries.

World leaders, including then-President Bush, signed a declaration pledging to end hunger by the year 2000, a challenge that the youth group is trying to meet.

"I definitely think it's possible," Hattenbach said. "I don't know if countries all over the world are completely on track to end hunger by the year 2000, but I know that it's possible. And I know that the more people who are committed to it, and the more young people who are putting pressure on our world leaders to do it, the more likely it is to happen."

Kids Ending Hunger states that $20 billion is needed to end world hunger. Hattenbach argues that government money would not be better spent on more visible issues such as AIDS research or the environment.

"I think the issues are really linked together, and that we're not going to be able to save the environment until we end hunger, and vice versa," she said. "People who are hungry right now aren't really going to care that much about saving the rain forest.

"The indigenous cultures in Brazil have been selling off the rain forest and cutting down the trees because that's all they can do to survive, but if they weren't hungry on a day-to-day basis, they would have more of an incentive to save the rain forest," she explained.

Members are confident that the world will not be overpopulated if hunger is ended.

"Studies have shown that when you end hunger in an area, the birth rate actually decreases because when hunger is ended, a mother knows that she no longer has to have 10 children just so one or two will survive . . . and grow up to be healthy," Rotermund said.

Even though a majority of hungry people live in Third World countries, Hattenbach warns Americans that it is their problem, too.

"We are really lucky to be living in as wonderful of a country as we live in, and to have as many opportunities as we do have," Hattenbach said. "The rest of the world doesn't have all the opportunities that we do. And if you want to turn your back on other people, that's your choice.

"But if I think about it, it's something that's just not OK with me.

EDITED BY: Robin Potasnik, 17