What is the price of a child’s life?

By Jennifer J. Foster

I just got finished reading this story from CNN on the starvation facing children in Ethiopia.

“A year of drought and soaring food prices” has led to shortages facing tens of thousands of children all across the country, CNN reports.

“We have nothing to feed our children,“ said one elder in Egu Village. “We are losing our children day by day.“

In addition to having more people in need this year because of a lack of rain to plant a second crop, “there is a critical shortfall in the supply of therapeutic foods used to treat children with severe acute malnutrition,“ according to one UNICEF official.

According to the CNN report, “UNICEF estimates six million Ethiopian children under the age of five are at risk and more than 120,000 have only about a month to live.“

Read that again.

One hundred and twenty thousand children have only a month to live ... before they starve to death.

More from the story:

The UN’s children’s agency is appealing for $10 million to pay for emergency needs of more than seven million children under five as well as pregnant and lactating mothers in 325 drought-affected districts.

The World Food Programme (WFP) supplies the emergency food for UNICEF, but rising food prices mean it could not guarantee aid for all the areas in need.

“Unless you get immediate assistance the risk is, you fall into severe malnutrition and eventually death, so unless our supporters come in immediately for this we fear that is what is going to happen in the country,“ said Jakob Mikkelse, the WFP’s nutrition and education chief.

My stomach was already churning from reading that as I sit next to my nine-month-old baby girl, who is munching away on her Cheerios. Then I looked in the CNN sidebar: One of the today’s top stories has to do with that Obama-won’t-wear-a-flag-lapel-pin pseudo-scandal.

Children are starving to death. And we are talking about flag pins.

That makes me sick. 

So what are we going to do about it?

I told you last week about about WorldVision (read the post here). Go to WorldVision’s home page here and click on the graphic that reads, “Global Food Crisis: A Silent Killer.“ You will be able to choose Ethiopia from a drop-down list of WorldVision-served countries where hunger is widespread. One little girl waiting for help is Likyelesh. She lives in a community severely affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis. She is a second-grader whose favorite subject is the national language of her country. She loves to play volleyball. She’s hungry. For $35 a month, you can help her.

Other hungry children are waiting for help in Haiti, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. You can’t help them all. But you can help one—or two, or more, as your circumstances allow.

Back to Ethiopia: I had another idea. UNICEF says it needs $10 million to save those 120,000 children from starvation. That’s $83.33 per child.

But what if America’s Fortune 1000 companies made this their charity action of the month? Split into 1000 parts, each company’s share is $10,000. Surely each Fortune 1000 company can afford $10,000. Some—like Exxon Mobil, with 2005 profits topping $35 billion —can afford to do much more.

Is it worth $10,000 to save 120,000 children from starving to death?

That works out to about eight and a half cents per child.

So what is the price of a child’s life? Is it $83.33? Is it $35? Or is it eight and a half cents?

Check out the list of Fortune 1000 companies here. Do your part—and demand that they do theirs.

New Kids: Back on the block!!

By Jennifer J. Foster

OK, so this isn’t a political post, but ...

The New Kids on the Block made good on a promised reunion this morning, giving their first performance in 15 years on the Today show. (I wrote this post when the reunion was announced last month.)

Rockefeller Center was awash with rain, but that didn’t stop thousands of women in their late 20s and early- to mid-30s from packing the place—some 48 hours in advance—and rocking out with the Fab Five from Beantown.

(SIDEBAR: We can’t call them a “boy band” anymore, since the New Kids are all pushing 40. Will the term “man band” catch on instead?)

Yes, I am 31 years old, and yes, I am a member of the New Kids generation. So yes, I was up at 10 minutes to 6, making sure the TV was on and I was watching!

But my sister, who is 29, was there.

She bought a plane ticket, took two days of vacation from her job and dragged her boyfriend to New York City for the event. She sent me this picture from Rockefeller Center yesterday afternoon when she arrived in the Big Apple:

Obviously, she wasn’t alone. The place was crawling with people, and that was 15 hours before the show.

She was up at 3 a.m. and in the plaza by 4:30 a.m. Her boyfriend retreated to the hotel—but what guy would blame him? The anticipatory screams impressed even the Today show hosts.

The New Kids, now men, took the stage at 8:30 a.m. and delivered a 25-minute show featuring a medley of old hits and their new song.

As Joey McIntyre told Meredith Viera, it was like those 15 years didn’t happen.

The assembled masses—16,000 people, by one estimate—waved their arms and danced and sang along like they were 12 and 13 again.

All in all, I thought they did great. They sounded pretty good and they looked as good as ever. I can’t wait to talk with my friends and see what they thought. Two of those I’ll be checking in with are pictured below. They are twin sisters, and we grew up together. Here we are with our New Kids stuff in 1990:

(Yes, I know a perm isn’t the best look for me. Ah, the life lessons of adolescence!)

As for my sister, she had a great time—even if she did get soaked. I know she wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I wish I could have been there with her.

One of the benefits of age and maturity (OK, so the jury’s still out on maturity) is that you don’t care as much anymore what people think of you. You are secure in your individuality, and you don’t feel like you have to hide or apologize for it. For me, that means a certain dorky wonkishness on political issues, an affinity for goofy movies and jokes and—yes—love for the New Kids on the Block.

I’m so glad they’re back!!