We're not in the habit of bringing attention to other media that don't have some sort of tie-in to us, but then, neither is David Letterman in the habit of bringing world hunger to the attention of his viewers. (Maybe Oprah and her grand philanthropic efforts are rubbing off on us.)

On Tuesday night, "Late Show" host David Letterman invited the head of World Food Programme (WFP), the world's largest humanitarian organization, to his stage and, for the first time, issued a plea for his audience to get involved in wiping out hunger on the planet.

It was perhaps a risky thing for a well-known comedian to do -- bring such a sad and overwhelming topic to his normally light-hearted show. Nobody likes to hear about children around the world starving to death, especially not on a comedy show.

But his reasoning was this: In view of all the devastating topics we can't do much about -- war, the financial crisis and the long-term effects of global warming -- here is one thing about which we can do something significant.

We can actually fix this one, according to Josette Sheeran, WFP's executive director.

In fact, at a time when we're talking about $10 billion a month being spent in Iraq and a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, a mere $3 billion a year to solve this little problem sounds like the pocket change you might throw in a tray at the gas station checkout counter.

Of course, we're not talking about supplying lamb chops or beef stew or even vegetarian lasagna. We're talking about one cup of nutritious porridge with vitamin "sprinkles" on top a day.

One cup -- the difference between life and death.

That cup of porridge each day at school keeps children alive long enough to grow up and learn to become productive world citizens. And those little vitamin sprinkles help stave off deficiencies that can cripple a person for life and cripple whole villages in the process.

Well, if Dave Letterman can do it, I guess we can, too. Here's the Web site for World Food Programme: www.wfp.org. And here's a bit of what you'll learn there:

nThere are 923 million undernourished people in the world today.

nEvery six seconds, one child dies from hunger and related diseases.

nAbout 59 million primary school-aged children go to school hungry.

nIt costs only 25 U.S. cents a day to give a child a WFP school meal.

This is a problem we can solve now. Let's do it.

-- Roshana Ariel

Assistant Editor

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IceMan says....
The endless black hole of hunger: when Americans gave millions to feed the hungry from 1950 to 1990, those kids grew up to multiply into billions more hungry people. Now they want more food to multiply again and again. STop feeding the black hole; provide vasectomies and tubal ligations to reduce their numbers.
10/6/2008

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from here says....
It's wonderful when people care enough to risk "DOING THE RIGHT THING." Always the right venue to do good and compassionate works. I'm becoming a Letterman fan and have long been a Journal fan!
10/4/2008

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