Food Day and Poverty Alleviation Day
October 16 and 17 are important dates as per UN calender. It was on one 16th of October UN started Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and hence the day is earmarked as the World Food Day. It gives importance to Food Security in related celebrations.October 17th is accepted as the World Poverty Alleviation Day. UN gives much importance to this day since there are several nations suffering from poverty. As per the UN report on Human Development (2010), two crores of people in the world are in the grip of acute poverty. Among several countries in Africa around 65 % do not have food, clothing, medicine or housing facilities. Among the poorest countries in the world 33 are in Africa.
In developing countries around 7 crore people earn only about one and one fourth dollars per day, which happens to be the upper limit of the approved poverty line in the world. Another major group earn only about two dollars per day. They are just surviving. Even within the so called developed countries about 3 % are within the poverty level.
UN aims at bringing down the poverty level through different actions like encouraging food production and streamlining food distribution.