There have been so many major stories in the news this year. We have seen the uprisings in Libya and Egypt, the phone hacking scandals and the recent riots in many of our cities. However one story that has not had enough publicity in my opinion is the East Africa Famine. Hundreds of thousands of people are still desperate for food and facing unimaginable suffering yet I have not seen any news reports on the famine on the TV screens for a while now.

I expect that if we are being honest most of us feel hopelessly inadequate when we see these awful scenes on our TV screens. What can we do to help these poor people? I believe that there are two things we can do:

1. Pray – This is something we can all do. Sometimes it is difficult to even know how to pray in these situations. Paul encourages us to pray for our rulers and authorities and this is a good place to start. We need the people in authority not to stop supplies reaching the people in desperate need. Those responsible for distributing the food also need our prayers too. And obviously we should pray for those who are hungry, sick and desperate for food.

2, Give – The various agencies working inEast Africa need money to help them in their work in feeding the hungry. The British government has been generous in setting aside money for helping despite criticism from certain newspapers. We as individuals can also give too. If you are interested in helping then Christian Aid, Save the Children or the DEC would be grateful to receive your donation. And if you are a tax payer then don’t forget to gift aid your donation as that will increase it by over 20%. Even if you can only give a small amount then please give as every pound raised is vital. If everyone in the UK gave £1 then that would be an incredible donation of approximately sixty million pound which would make a substantial difference.