One such story is of hip-hop artist Sister Fa and her efforts to stop the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) in her home country of Senegal. From her early days as an unpolished music phenom, through a career-reinvention in Berlin, Sister Fa has continually smashed barriers in the male-dominated hip-hop world. But as the stirring documentary Sarabah reveals, her strength of character was forged in a journey of hardship and transformation. Now, with the support of her husband and child, Sister Fa speaks out about her own experience as a survivor of FGC, and travels with her band to rural Senegal, where she launches a music-packed education campaign that culminates in an emotional visit to her home village. Sister Fa will be joining Link for a LIVE web chat following the broadcast and online presentation of Sarabah Sunday, March 4 at 11am PT/2pm ET, to take questions about her story and important work. Questions can be posted in advance here.
If you read and watch entertainment news, you know that an Iranian filmmaker, Asghar Farhadiis, is racking up the Hollywood awards for A Separation even in a climate of US-imposed sanctions. And if you're paying attention to most media coverage, you're well aware of the nuclear issue. But other than that, do we have a lens into the lives and stories of Iranians? Does this kind of cultural lens matter as we settle into our perspectives about Iran? Yes. Without showing the lives, struggles and culture of everyday people living and working in Iran, we in the West have a potentially skewed image of Iranians.
In 2006, Link TV developed a documentary TV series, Bridge to Iran, to provide a window into the lives and struggles of everyday Iranians -- to respond to the cultural and political tensions that have developed between Iran and the US since the Iranian Revolution. Over the years, Bridge to Iran has covered a wide range of social and political issues in modern Iran, including the experiences of young girls facing womanhood and uncertain futures, religious pilgrims who risk their lives to visit a holy site in war-torn Iraq, rural life and political awareness, an exploration of Tehran as an urban metropolis, and Iranian women's participation in the election process.
The new season premieres on February 14. In each of the four episodes of Bridge to Iran, in-depth discussions between host Parisa Soultani and top Iranian filmmakers provide a unique lens into some of the challenges and realities facing Iranians during a time of increased instability -- including censorship, sanctions and safety concerns.
Here are the details about the films and when to catch the episodes, on Link TV or online:
Bridge to Iran offers a diverse perspective on a country on the receiving end of a torrent of media attention -- but with a lens that's inclusive of the people and the art found within Iranian borders. We hope you'll tune in and tell others.
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Caty Borum Chattoo is a producer and communication strategist with Link TV, assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC, and media fellow with the AU Center for Social Media.
This week, we had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Sharon Norton, Director of Development at the Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition. Link Media is collaborating with the Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition this year to raise awareness about global hunger and malnutrition through Revolution Hunger. Revolution Hunger is a unique campaign that harnesses the power of teens across the United States to take on the problems of hunger and malnutrition around the world.
Our mission is creating lasting solutions that enable nutritional well-being in children. Our work is focused on children under the age of five and particularly those under the age of two. The provision of proper nutrition to this difficult to reach and often overlooked age group can help prevent stunting, improve cognitive outcomes, and ensure more positive health consequences for life.
Overall, the majority of our work is aimed at resolving hidden hunger. Hidden hunger is a chronic lack of vitamins and minerals that can lead to physical and cognitive afflictions. In Central America for example, there is a dire need for nutritional intervention to alleviate hidden hunger as evidenced by the average prevalence of 23.5% stunting regionally. Stunting is essentially where children do not grow to their potential in height and Guatemala and Honduras top the list with 54.5% and 30.1%, respectively, in stunted children under the age of 5. Moreover, anemia, iodine and/or vitamin deficiencies affect over 16 million young children and 5 million pregnant women in this region. This is a significant issue as those affected by micronutrient deficiency worldwide exceeds two billion. Dietary deficiencies are borne disproportionately by children, mothers, and those living in rural communities. Resolution of these deficiencies will result in improved health outcomes for children and mothers.
I think it has been the combination of an open mind, a spirit of discovery and skills that had the potential for broad application. When I entered college, I was 100% sure I wanted to be a veterinarian, then I started taking nutrition classes and learned that I loved nutrition, ration formulation and working with large animals. That took me into an entirely different career, but my degree in nutrition has allowed me to work in a number of different nutrition related sectors. Today, at the Mathile Institute I am using my nutritional training to help resolve malnutrition in children. But I also get to apply other skills I picked up while working in the packaged goods sector such as technical communications and consumer understanding methodologies. My personal connection to my work stems from my belief in the "Golden Rule" -- treating others as we would wish to be treated. I believe in treating people with dignity and respect and, for children, I believe that includes their right to a healthy diet.
I was incredibly inspired by an experience I had not long ago in El Salvador. We met with FUSAL, a private non-profit organization in El Salvador that channels the experience and social responsibility of a committed Salvadoran business family. This family has solidarity with the most vulnerable people in society and are dedicated to human development, which is why health and education are at the core of their non-profit organization's work. I had the opportunity to visit one of FUSAL's project sites in a rural community. The community workers were teaching the mothers about nutrition and health, demonstrating how to prepare more nutritious meals and ways to provide their babies stimulation to enhance cognitive development. I was so inspired by the sense of community, kindness and the care among these women and among those that were serving them. It was an example of the kind of humanity and action that we need to solve the problem of hunger in this world.
Another story that continually moves me the life and work of Dr. Norman Borlaug. This one, soft-spoken man, with humble, Midwestern roots, was able to change the world through his Green Revolution, an agricultural initiative, which increased crop yields so countries could feed their people. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to ending hunger. Norman Borlaug has been credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. Knowing that one person can make that type of impact is personally inspiring.
Many people may hear the word undernutrition and think this means not having enough food or calories. While that is one form of undernutrition, hidden hunger that I described earlier is another and very prevalent form. But even in the developed world, we see undernutrition due to the inability to access nutritious food. While some of this is linked to poverty, many with the financial means and ability to access a healthy diet make poor food choices. They often do not consume enough of the foods they need to derive important nutrients needed for health. The bottom line is, undernutrition is a global epidemic and the first step in ending it is awareness of the issue and the causes.
I am really excited about this initiative and it was actually inspired by Norman Borlaug. He dedicated his life to fighting hunger around the world. His skill, passion and deep respect for communities in the developing world ignited a global movement that would feed billions worldwide. The spirit of Revolution Hunger was born out of his example and is a campaign that arms teens with information about hunger's causes and solutions and challenges them with calls to action to fight the issue. Everyone has a role and everyone can be a hunger fighter through Revolution Hunger.
We hope that through our collaborative effort we will alleviate malnutrition and put an end, once and for all to the 25,000 daily deaths that result from hunger-related issues. We believe that capacity-building with initiatives like Revolution Hunger are part of the answer. We also are confident that our approach to establishing new nutritional innovations coupled with community awareness and education programs, relevant behavior change initiatives, and ongoing engagement of community leaders will produce scalable and sustainable solutions.
For teens go to revolutionhunger.org and learn what it takes to become a hunger fighter. Watch the video, take a personality quiz and begin the journey to face, fight and live the battle to fight hunger. Participate in activities to fight hunger in your local community and beyond. For adults, I would also suggest visiting revolutionhunger.org to not only learn more about hunger but also what you can do to become a teen advocate. If you are a teacher, we also have begun to develop case studies that can give students the opportunity to explore and tackle real issues in the classroom. I hope everyone will join the fight and join the revolution!
On our last couple days of programming for World Food Week, Link TV spoke with co-founder of FoodCorps, Curt Ellis. Want to get inspired and spread the word about taking real action in communities around food justice? Read this interview. And continue to visit our food page for "Hungry Planet" airtimes, to watch programs online, and to learn more about these critical issues.
FoodCorps works with a network of young leaders around the country in a kind of Peace Corps for healthy school food. Our service members teach children about healthy food and where it comes from, build and tend school gardens that help kids to grow and cook healthy food themselves, and work with school food service staff and local farmers to bring high-quality food into school lunch. Taken together, these three things -- knowledge, engagement and access -- address two big problems at once: childhood hunger and childhood obesity. It sounds paradoxical, but those two problems are closely linked. Kids who don't have reliable access to healthy food don't get a balanced diet, and all too rarely get reliable access to healthy fruits and vegetables -- so food insecure populations are often the ones with the highest rates of both hunger and obesity. As we see it, school is the best place to start fixing both these problems: 32 million children eat roughly half of their calories 180 days of the year in school. In helping to make that food fresher and healthier, we're setting kids on a path out of hunger and into lifelong health.
We have a serious health crisis in this country, and it's directly related to the food we eat. Studies show that the relationships we build with food -- healthy or unhealthy -- start in childhood. Children who are eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, as children will grow up to be adults who eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. And, likewise, children who grow up being served fast food in their school cafeterias will feed their own families' fast food someday. If we help kids understand from an early age that healthy food tastes good, that it's fun to grow and prepare, that it makes you feel good, and that it doesn't have to be out of reach financially, we can put powerful and positive change into motion.
Unfortunately, much of the food that is seen as affordable in America -- fast food, processed food -- is also some of the least healthy. So we have a shocking number of people in our country who are simultaneously obese and malnourished. Until we have solved problems of access to fruits and vegetables, whole grains and high-quality protein -- both in terms of physical access and financial access -- we'll continue to have these problems of hunger and obesity.
As I see it, if that solution is going to start anywhere, it's going to start in our schools. My grandparents' generation made an important decision: that the children in our country should have lunch in school, so we can be sure they all have an opportunity to get at least one healthy meal a day. Now, with the addition of school breakfast and after-school snack, school food is even more important than it was a generation or two ago. But the food we're serving kids these days looks all too much like fast food, and too little like carrots. We need to change what's on the lunch tray and make sure the tools we're using to fight hunger -- like school lunch -- are really solving the problem they set out to fix.
For a long time, the food industry -- and its consumers -- prioritized quantity over quality. I applaud the efforts to give all people access to an abundant food supply, but I think we took that ideal too far. It's hard to think of anything more important than food, yet we don't treat food, or farmers, with the respect they deserve. I think the food we produce and consume as a nation should have integrity. It should be grown and processed in an ecologically sustainable way, by farmers and workers who are compensated fairly, it should be safe and healthy for people to eat, and it should be accessible to all -- even the least fortunate members of our society. I think those are standards that are important to uphold for something as fundamental as the food we eat. And if we live out those ideals, hunger won't be a problem anymore. Diet-related disease won't be a problem anymore. We won't see Florida tomato growers getting brought to trial on charges of slavery in the fields. And the soil we depend on will continue producing high-quality food for eons to come.
Locally grown foods are fresher, so in most cases they'll taste better and be more nutritious to boot. Vitamins are fragile, so vegetables that are trucked long distances can lose half their nutrient content! Also, sourcing locally grown food keeps a huge amount of money in the local economy, and the reduction in transportation reduces greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on oil. In some ways, though, I think the most important thing that comes from eating locally is the sense that food comes from somewhere. That it's grown by someone. And that's a reminder that those people and places matter.
Before joining the effort to start FoodCorps, I got to collaborate on a few films that explored the food world. I worked with Ian Cheney and Aaron Woolf on a documentary called King Corn, which was about a year we spent in Iowa growing an acre of corn (well, an acre of corn syrup and corn-fed fast-food meat, as it turned out). I worked with those two again on a follow-up to King Corn called Big River, which explored the ecological consequences of modern agriculture. And then I helped Ian make a film about the wacky and amazing people who are bringing farming into urban places. That film was called Truck Farm, and it starts with a project we did planting a vegetable garden in the back of an '86 Dodge Pickup. You can find the first couple films on Netflix, and the third on Amazon.
That's a big question, and if it could be answered in a paragraph I think someone would have done so already. But I'll highlight a few things. On the individual level, I think it's important that we learn -- and help others learn -- how to grow and cook healthy, affordable food. During World War II, home gardeners were producing more than half of America's food. There's no reason we shouldn't be planting our window boxes and truck beds and vacant lots in healthy, high-quality, incredibly affordable food. On the societal level, we have some powerful building blocks for creating a healthy food environment for all. The national school lunch program is a powerful place to start. If we use that existing program as a way to make sure all children in America grow up having regular access to real, healthy food, we'll go a long way toward solving hunger in America.
The mainstream media has really embraced food as an important issue in the last decade, and that's been great to see. Unfortunately, before that, I think they were missing much of the story, and it was independent outlets that were the first to highlight the way that food shapes our environment, our health and our sense of justice and equality.
Most importantly, I'd like to see us reverse the present statistic that this generation of children is the first that is likely to have a shorter lifespan than their parents. In fifty years I hope we have healthier children: children who feel connected to their food and have an enduring and healthy relationship with it.
I hope we can come together as a nation around the simple belief that food is important. That it's important enough that no child should go hungry. That it's important enough that it should be produced responsibly, sustainably, and ethically. That it should be available to all. If we can do that, I'll feel pretty good about our ability to solve some of the other tough problems we're facing as a society.
For young leaders, the best way to get involved is to apply to become a service member in FoodCorps; applications for next year's class will be available this winter. For everyone else, if you support FoodCorps with a financial contribution, no matter how small, you can help us meet our goal of expanding our program into all 50 states by 2020. With your help, we can make sure more than a million kids are eating healthy, high-quality school lunch every day.
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