Africa is the most unfortunate continent on the planet. Besides its climate and geographic disadvantages, most of the African countries are having civil wars that even drive this continent into a spiral chaos.

This continent is being torn apart by AIDS. Millions of people have died. It is discriminately slaughtering people either they are straight or gay, women or men, young or old, rich or poor.

On the top of that tragedy, the famine is another chronic problem that has constantly killed millions of African people. In 1985, the whole world witnessed the severe famine in Africa, in particular, in Ethiopia. Millions of children died. Some children were as thin as a drum stick. They could not even protect themselves from hundreds of flies that were seizing their dry flesh.

Those pictures created awareness among the rich countries. Aids were poured into the continent.

The Famine in Africa is chronic. In this decade, the countries like Sudan and Nigeria are facing a sever famine. The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) says 2.5 million people in Niger (pop. 11.7 million) need urgent food aid. Many organizations are trying to help but it’s still not enough. Rich countries are still reluctant to throw money in even though in the G8 summit those exclusively greedy countries have pledged to increase the amount of aid. The U.S, the richest country in the world, was so reluctant to increase the aid because it is broke and is so caught up with spending money on the Iraq war and all those porks.

It is sad that while we always throw good food away, those people in Africa do not even have a piece of bread in their stomach.
I believe we can make a difference. We can help them by donating a small amount of our money to those organizations. Just 30 dollars, we can provide nutritional food for 30 children for a month. Isn’t it worth it?

We are all struggling. Some people might feel like they have to save themselves first before they will be able to save other people’s life. However, when will we be able to say if our life is saved enough to start helping other people?

We do not need to wait to help other people. Or we do not have to wait until we die to donate money like a billionaire-Warren Buffet’s mantra.

Please visit CARES or DOCTORWITHOUTBORDER or UNICEF.
These are 3 organizations that I donate money to every month.

Let us pledge of helping these unfortunate people every month with a little of our sacrifice of two glasses of Chardonnay or three glasses of Long Island Ice Tea (Based on New York City’s price ^_^)

Tae Athikomvittaya