World Hunger Day Date in the current year: May 28, 2024

In social sciences, politics and humanitarian aid, hunger is a condition in which a person doesn’t have the financial or physical capability to eat enough nutritious food to lead a healthy life. Throughout human history, portions of the planet’s population have often suffered periods of hunger, but it wasn’t until recently that the international community has been developing and taking measures to reduce the number of people suffering from hunger and, hopefully, eventually put an end to world hunger once and for all. The United Nations Organization has been leading the fight against hunger since after World War II.

Even though there is enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, a third of it goes to waste, and more than 800 million people don’t have enough to eat; two thirds of them are women. While the majority of the world’s population lives in Asia, much of the increase in hunger over the past decade occurred in South America and Africa. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the three principal causes of the recent increase in hunger are climate change, conflict, and recessions.

Unlike famines and wars which attract emergency humanitarian aid, the cycle of hunger and poverty in low-income and marginalized communities cannot be broken by simply giving people food. The key to ending world hunger is supporting communities facing hunger and empowering them to make change and build their own sustainable solutions, which include, but are not limited to, sustainable farming practices that allow to make the most of scarce natural resources, food waste reduction, programs that help people adapt to climate change, tree planting and reforestation campaigns, and more.

World Hunger Day has been observed every May 28 since 2011. It was created by The Hunger Project, a nonprofit charity organization committed to ending world hunger in a sustainable way. Founded in 1977, it runs programs in Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia), South Asia (Bangladesh and India), and Latin America (Mexico and Peru).

World Hunger Day unites thousands of organizations and millions of people around the globe to make the voices of those facing hunger heard and implement programs that will help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger. Anyone can join in and make their contribution to ending world hunger. However small your contribution might seem, doing something is better than doing nothing.

There are many ways to observe World Hunger Day. You can donate to The Hunger Project or any other charity that helps those in need, volunteer at your local food bank or soup kitchen, take a pledge to produce less food waste, and spread the word on social media with the hashtag #WorldHungerDay to encourage others to get involved.