'No Hunger' - Al Gore's New Movie?

Published July 22, 2009 @ 03:38PM PT

Action Against Hunger launches campaign urging the former VP to help end childhood deaths from acute malnutrition.

New York, NY — Action Against Hunger announces the U.S. launch of an international grassroots initiative calling on Al Gore to make his next film about global hunger—a crisis that kills one child every six seconds. The No Hunger initiative, which began in Madrid, has gathered more than 64,000 signatures for a petition that will be presented to the former Vice President and Nobel Laureate this December at the climate change conference in Copenhagen. Action Against Hunger’s No Hunger initiative represents the initial phase of a broader international effort to end childhood deaths from acute malnutrition.

Action Against Hunger has launched the website www.AskAlGore.org featuring a trailer for No Hunger—a film that has yet to be made—along with a petition addressed to the former Vice President. The aid organization asks individuals to visit the site, view the trailer, and urge Al Gore to produce the film.

For the first time in history, there are cost-effective tools that could put an end to childhood deaths from malnutrition. Action Against Hunger calls on Al Gore to help transform public understanding of global hunger with a film to mobilize broad support for eradicating acute malnutrition—much as An Inconvenient Truth rallied the public to address climate change.

“Al Gore is well positioned to inform the world that we now have the tools to save lives on a massive scale,” said Nan Dale, Executive Director of Action Against Hunger’s U.S. branch. “It is no longer a question of how to treat and prevent starvation—we already know that—but of whether we can gain the public support necessary to reach every acutely malnourished child.”

While global hunger affects more than 1 billion people worldwide, acute malnutrition is the most immediate killer: 19 million children worldwide face outright starvation—but only a tiny proportion of these severely malnourished children receive assistance. As a result, as many as five million children die from hunger-related causes every year, despite the availability of revolutionary new products that could save millions if made sufficiently available. This is the story No Hunger seeks to tell, and with Al Gore’s help, we hope to rally the international public support needed to end acute malnutrition.

“Eliminating deaths from hunger is no longer a utopian dream, but a reality we can make happen,” said Dale. “Help us convince Al Gore to make what could be the most shocking and important film of the year.”

Treating and preventing acute malnutrition

For the first time in history, recent advances have made acute malnutrition preventable and cost-effective to treat on a larger scale. For more information, visit www.actionagainsthunger.org/end-malnutrition.