In honor of Blog Action Day, I’m turning over the podium to Yvonne from Outrageous Gardens. She can say it better than I.

Hunger is the number one killer of African children, more than any single disease condition. The simple lack of food, which weakens the immune system, plays a role in more than half of childhood deaths. (World Health Report 2002)

One spiritual teacher who has greatly influenced me is named Dattatreya Siva Baba. He is a revered siddha in the Tamil tradition. One of the first things I read by him was this statement: “Starvation is 100% preventable and poverty is 100% reversible.”

I read that simple imperative many times. Each time I read it, some chord was plucked, something uncomfortable and prodding. I took that statement literally as a challenge to my life’s work. It felt to me as if he had thrown down some gauntlet of seva or service and asked me personally what was I going to do about the billions of hungry people! At that moment, I truly had no clear idea and besides, it felt too enormous for one woman to tackle effectively.

I have always considered my chosen vocation—landscaping, gardening and soil restoration—as a large part of my seva in this lifetime. Yet this statement haunted me and pursued me in the oddest ways.

Everywhere I looked, every article I read, every news story of yet another climactic or human-induced disaster, seemed like a cosmic nudge in the ribs to get on with it. It took about four months of prayer, meditation and asking out loud to every tree, friend, and passing cloud for some kind of indicator light before the answer appeared. Standing with a group at a conference on intentional communities, a friend and I were chatting when she asked the pivotal question which brought everything—personal, spiritual, political and practical–together into Outrageous Gardens.

Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.
~ Nelson A. Rockefeller

Why “Outrageous” Gardens?

• Because for me it’s outrageous that over 800 million people in the world are malnourished and 177 million of them are children (according to Bread for the World.)
• It’s outrageous that one child DIES every 5 seconds from the consequences of hunger.
• It’s outrageous to me that enough food is being produced in the world today to feed every man, woman and child yet the hungry must wait for our handouts of grains which are expensive to maintain and difficult to transport in such large quantities required when a nutritious supply of basic vegetables and small fruits may be only a discarded tire, burlap sack or plastic bag away.

And that is the reason for my website, Outrageous Gardens: to share these amazingly uncomplicated, abundant, and empowering gardens with as many individuals, organizations and agencies as possible in the hope that they will use the information to create, share the results and pass them on to those who need a cheap and easily created food production system.

I believe we need to make food-growing at the doorstep a primary goal for a return to health and these gardens provide some of the simplest, most direct, culturally appropriate and least costly systems.

Please check out my first article on Outrageous Gardens in the Nov/Dec issue of “Touch The Soil” magazine and part II in the Jan/Fe 09 issue to learn more about the need for these gardens and some examples and models from all over the world.

This post was inspired by Blog Action Day.com

Please read just a few of the other posts on poverty published today:

• Human Trafficking on Mid Life Mommy by Born2Fly.org
• Yvonne at Outrageous Gardens wrote on Conscious Destiny.com
• Vicky at Remarkable Parents
• Todd at The Broad Brush

• Divine Purpose Unleashed  – Can you Live with Purpose in Poverty?