Eunice+C+SE

http://www.thehungersite.com

In this website, there is a huge yellow button that says “Click Here to give - it’s Free!” It enables the clickers to donate cups of food to the hungry without any money at all. They have charity partners to pass on their donations, which come the money earned from displaying ads of the site sponsors. Also, they have an online shop, and a portion of each product you buy from that shop goes to those charity partners.

One of the charity partners of The Hunger Site is Mercy Corps, a global aid agency. Here is a story of a woman named Zainbon in a village called Naga Umbang in Indonesia: Zainbon is a 37-year-old rice farmer. Her husband mans a desk as a temporary, low-level bureaucrat in the district transportation office nearby, but still they struggle to find the rupiahs each month to get by. She explains how they stretch six or seven dollars a day across the needs of cooking staples, school fees, fuel and now, in the fall planting season, fertilizer and rice seed. A Mercy Corps survey in the area recently found staple food prices climbing between ten and twenty-five percent, on top of fuel prices that jumped forty percent earlier this year. "This is hugely important for us — the staples are rising and the salary isn't keeping pace," Zainbon says. "What about others whose husbands are just farming? They're struggling even worse." This worldwide crisis is striking an area just starting to find its feet again after a vicious cycle of calamity. For decades, a rural separatist conflict kept many farmers out of their rice fields and fruit plantations for fear that they would be caught in the crossfire. Then in 2004, the Asian tsunami sent a wall of water up to thirty feet deep and flattened everything in the area, including the entire village of Naga Umbang. With the houses now rebuilt, the rice paddies cleared of debris and new water buffalo roaming the yards, villagers are now teaming with Mercy Corps to strengthen their rice farming techniques and improve crop yields. And with food prices bearing down on locals, it couldn't come at a better time. "We need to modernize," Zainbon said. "We're already thinking about when Mercy Corps leaves here, and this transfer of knowledge is one way we can build independence. Money from an NGO would go quickly, but knowledge and technology sticks in your mind." The improved techniques are aimed at boosting incomes. Typically most of the rice harvest in villages like this goes to feed families. But if farmers in Naga Umbang can grow more efficiently, they will begin to see surplus rice from the same backbreaking labor they currently put into the season. And they will hopefully have the resolve to plant a second crop each year, which they can take to market in nearby cities. That's the sort of security that the poor in Naga Umbang and around the world are seeking in these turbulent times. "We need to pay attention to agriculture and go back to it," Zainbon said. "It's difficult if we just depend on income from government or other office jobs. But our prospects are better if we pay attention to the land and plant better crops."

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__**Questions:**__
1. How do we know if the money actually goes to the hungry or not? 2. The products they sell at the Hunger Site Store look very African. Could they possibly have come from Africa? 3. I think clicking is a great idea, but can’t they just donate all the money from advertisers without third people clicking? Why do they need us to click? 4. How is this site beneficial the overall society, not just the hungry? 5. What are other ways that we could help them other than the ones I mentioned in the video?