If you are anything like me you cant help but think, how can one person make a change? How can i make a difference i am only one person. The time to change that perspective is now. You are not only a person. You are a person with access to a device that reaches the world. And you have access to every product on the planet givin the right dollar amount.. But if im going to play a part in the solution, what part do i want to play? If im going to fix a problem, what problems do i want to fix?. Im definetly not here to repair celebrity relationships or tell you where to get the hottest dress to walk the red carpet with. I tried fixing peoples homes with a remodeling company. I failed because it wasnt my passion and frankly dont know a thing about it. I just wanted more money, going after the money didnt seem to work when i didnt have knowledge of what i was doing. So i switched my focus. What can i do that i feel passionate about?.

I want to fix the worlds problems. The actual problems. I started figuring out what those were. Then I  remembered when I was young and ambitious I dreamt of  involving myself in third world countries where I would provide them with clean drinking water and a way to dispose of waste properly. I remembered wanting to start a community garden and actually  bought things to start one but lacked ambition and funding to get it going..  We are beyond a time where these things are a necessity in many places now.

According to businessinsider.com For the third year in a row, millennials who participated in theWorld Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Survey 2017 believe climate change is the most serious issue affecting the world today.

Nearly half (48.8%) of the survey participants chose climate change as their top concern, and 78.1% said they would be willing to change their lifestyle to protect the environment. There is a reason for that. Environmental degradation.

A huge part of Environmental degradation is Water degradation. According to Wikiliks; Approximately only 2.5% of all of the water on Earth is fresh water, with the rest being salt water. 69% of fresh water is frozen in ice caps located on Antarctica and Greenland, so only 30% of the 2.5% of fresh water is available for consumption. Fresh water is an exceptionally important resource, since life on Earth is ultimately dependent on it. Water transports nutrients, minerals and chemicals within the biosphere to all forms of life, sustains both plants and animals, and moulds the surface of the Earth with transportation and deposition of materials.

The current top three uses of fresh water account for 95% of its consumption; approximately 85% is used for irrigation of farmland, golf courses, and parks, 6% is used for domestic purposes such as indoor bathing uses and outdoor garden and lawn use, and 4% is used for industrial purposes such as processing, washing, and cooling in manufacturing centers. It is estimated that one in three people over the entire globe are already facing water shortages, almost one-fifth of the world population live in areas of physical water scarcity, and almost one quarter of the world’s population live in a developing country that lacks the necessary infrastructure to use water from available rivers and aquifers. Water scarcity is an increasing problem due to many foreseen issues in the future, including population growth, increased urbanization, higher standards of living, and climate change. This is why water filters need to be accessible to everyone. I wrote an article on the benefits of alkaline water there are also other alternatives as well as a water filter bottle to kill germs and make drinkable, previously undrinkable water. That article is linked here https://smartmindbodysoul.com/alkaline-water-the-fountain-of-youth/

Other than water being a huge problem. The number of hungry people in the world has increased over the last few years. One in nine people in the world go hungry on a regular basis, and, as a result, suffer from nutritional deficiencies. Food security is the largest threat to the overall health of the population of man kind, even more than malaria, tuberculosis or HIV.

So, what is the problem? How can it be 2019 and people are still going hungry?

The problem is not that we are not producing enough food (although this may become a problem in the future), but that people lack access to food. Not having enough money to obtain basic food supplies and not being able to grow our own food are the two main causes of being unable to acquire food. At the root of all these problems is conflict.

While hunger has steadily decreased over the past ten years, over the last few of these years  an upsurge of conflict has doubled the number of refugees in the world.

Farmers need to abandon their land to save themselves and their families. Once these farmers reach a safer location, they have no land rights, which means they can’t grow crops. These refugees then need to purchase more highly priced exported foods. When they don’t have enough money, families don’t eat. They dont have the luxury of stealing a package of steak if they are starving. Or hitting a food bank. They dont have state funded programs giving them foodstamps. They simply just do not eat.

Even though approximately 11% of the world is undernourished, more people, about 40% of the adult population, are overweight.

No country in the world has seen any kind of decrease in obesity rate. Even with starvation being as prevalent as it is. In fact, it is rising among both children and adults. While it is the easy rout to think of obesity as a form of ‘over-nutrition’, it is actually another kind of malnutrition. Withholding necessary nutrients to replace them with convenience and flavor. People consume nutrient deficient, high-carb, preservative-rich prepacked sugar filled garbage food and hold on to unhealthy weight as a result. Causing a laundry list of illnesses and disorders including diabetes, cancer, blood disorders, heart disease and stroke. When we talk about hunger, we’re not just talking about access to food, but also access to nutrients. In order to thrive, humans need a range of foods providing a variety of essential nutrients. Poor families often rely on just one or two staple foods— like corn or wheat — which means they’re not getting enough of critical macronutrients like protein, and they’re also missing out on lots of important vitamins and minerals. The less nutritious a person’s diet, the poorer their health will be, the less sustainable energy they will have, and the less likely they will be to break the poverty-hunger cycle. This is especially important for women and young children: Nutrition support during pregnancy and up to the age of five can help protect children for their entire lives, reducing the likelihood of disease, poor health, and cognitive impairment.

Besides malnutrition, there are many other issues affecting health on a global scale. In the past, the main topic of focus had been communicable diseases such as hepatitis, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.

Increased access to clean water and improved education around proper sanitation has resulted in an overall decrease in the prevalence of transferable diseases worldwide. However, this does not mean that efforts to improve sanitation should be discontinued or slowed down by any means, only that what is currently being done to prevent disease is actually working.

The focus of the global healthcare community has now shifted to non-communicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well as road traffic injuries and deaths. Communicable diseases now kill 70% of persons and low-income countries are the most severely affected. While it is still important to focus on teaching proper hygiene practices, the importance of good nutritional education and preventing personal harm is now being emphasized.

I believe there is no better time to educate people about what foods effect what parts of their body and mind. Explaining the dangers of a sugar filled diet, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking tobacco, using unsafe cooking fuels, driving recklessly and walking across a busy highway, not having the proper lighting while jogging or bicycling is imperative. So many deaths are a direct result of a preventable ,uneducated decision /choice.

In most low-income countries emergency response is not of the highest standards, which means that empowering individuals in the local community with first aid and the access to clean water and knowledge of how to grow food can help to save lives.

The UN tackles the problems of health and well-being under UNSDG 3 and the World Health Organisation (WHO) oversees the objectives set under this goal.

GVI helps to further the aims of UNSDG 3 through their healthcare projects. Their healthcare projects are available in Thailand, South Africa, Nepal, Mexico and India. These projects are mostly educational.

We have a need to conduct workshops with students and community members to teach them about preventative healthcare practices. Not how to vaccinate and hope for the best and buy cough syrup by the gallon when it fails and you get sick anyway.

These type of workshops like WASH (Water and Sanitation for Health) classes where they are taught about the importance of washing hands and brushing teeth as well as healthy cooking and eating workshops.
We need to promote the importance of daily exercise. A huge reason people are more susceptible to illness is poor health and fitness. We also need to focus on maternal and child health as well as first aid workshops.https://bit.ly/2RhBw82

Since it is unlikely we are going to change the content in our public schools or change the curriculum and force the adjenda that these things are important to focus on we are blessed with the platforms of the internet and social media to be able to come together and focus on the needs of the many. A movement that really hit close to my heart was the The Dakota Access Pipeline or Bakken pipeline.

The Dakota access pipeline is a 1,172-mile-long underground oil pipeline in the United States. It begins in the shale oil fields of the Bakken formation in northwest North Dakota and continues through South Dakota and Iowa to an oil terminal near Patoka, Illinois. This is an example of people coming together against a raging system that is destroying agriculture and i am aware it is a little off topic however i feel necessary to mention as it pertains to adversity when people stand up for what is right and what is good for the health and welbeing of millions of people but get brutally stomped out by big money.

The reason it hit me so hard is because I understand the need for clean water. I understand what the suix tribes and local natives were protecting  and are continueing to  protect. The right to clean drinking water out weighs the right to profit. Especially when we have so many other options of feul and products like hemp to replace plastics that we no longer even need to frack or use crued oil. Its as old as the ideals of the politicians perpetuating the behaviors that WILL lead to our demise. And as necessary.

The pipeline was built and will one day leak and those percentages of available drinkable water will go down dramatically and we will be left wanting. Because we let the needs of the few destroy the lives of the many. So if we are not able to change their behaviors we at least need to take responsibility and need to change ours. We can educate eachother and teach our children to grow food. Teach them about alkalinity and acidity. Push healthy alternatives to transportation to reduce our footprint and increase physical activity. Shorten our trip to and from our place of work and build a community that helps tend a garden that feeds everyone and promotes self sustainability. That community can be on the internet and the garden can be information. However its attainable for you.

There are tons of benefits to having a community garden: stronger sense of community, promoting healthy eating, learning what it really takes to grow your food. It’s also a great way to make gardening a possibility for those living in urban homes with less yard room, and to create a healthy town center for citizens of all ages.

But where should you start if you’d like a community garden of your own? I reccomend looking within your community to find out potential leaders, and if there’s any urban farming already going on in your area. You’ll need someone who’s already familiar with farming techniques and growing produce locally to make sure your community garden is truly successful. There are places like where I’m  From where you can rent a small chunk of land to grow your own garden that is overseen by a college botony group. Those places are great but sometimes not phesible for someone who already struggles to afford groceries. Schools are another great option. Reach out to your local schools that don’t have gardens to see if they have any space that they’d want to turn into a community garden. Churches also often own a lot of land and frequently have an interest in community gardening.

In his forward to UNICEF’s 1998 “State of the World’s Children” report, Secretary-General Kofi Anan spells out a simple but most unassailable truth: “Sound nutrition can change children’s lives, improve their physical and mental development, protect their health, and lay a firm foundation for future productivity.”

Over 200 million children under the age of five in developing countries are malnourished. For them, and for the world at large, Kofi Anan’s message is especially urgent. Malnutrition contributes to more than half of the nearly 12 million deaths of children under five in developing countries each year, and malnourished children who survive often lose precious mental capacity.

This should not be happening with how much technology we have. We can get to other planets but cant get clean water and food accrossed a sea of water and food. Explain that. However far-reaching the benefits of nutrition may be from a clinical viewpoint, ensuring good nutrition is also a matter of international law. The right to proper nutrition is most emphatically proclaimed in the UN’s 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Under the Convention, virtually every government in the world recognizes the right of all children to the highest attainable standard of health, specifically including the right to good nutrition. So the fact the laws are in place, practice needs to be in place.

this implies learning– and action. Action can take three forms: influencing public policy, contributing financially, and working directly with poor people.

Learn about hunger and poverty. What are the situations and hangups confronting poor people in the United States and in the rest of the world, and what are the underlying factors causing their hunger and poverty? An important  step to helping poor people is to increase your understanding through learning. While it is, in general, not possible to support individual poor families, it is possible to contribute to organizations that do support poor people. We have all of the resources and the information to fix world hunger and provide clean drinkable water to the world. The question is will we do anything about it. I hope everyone gets to see a day without wanting or lacking basic nutrition and the comforts of water and shelter.

I hope this helps and reaches people that also want to help and become a part of the solution and i look forward to doing my part to help us become the BEST US that we can be.

#Alkaline water #drinkable water #worldhunger #nutritional #students