by Loren Jersey
West Hollywood
Across this great nation a movement has been spreading. A movement started by one Dredmond Bellbottom the 3rd of West Hollywood, California. Dredmond, who has always been very active in his community, was frustrated by the roadblocks and red tape he encountered in the humanitarian programs which existed at the time. “It just takes so long to see any results” he comments, looking back on his 15 years with such organizations as WFP and CARE. “And more than that, I couldn’t actually be there when a hungry person got that food. I couldn’t feel the change happening at all!”
And then, in 2002, Dredmond found the inspiration he needed to start his own fight against hunger. “I remember exactly what I was doing” he recalls. “I had just finished depositing more donations which would be sorted, packaged, shipped, repackaged, and finally drop-shipped to a remote hunger relief organization in Zambia, where it would sit in a warehouse. Anyway, I saw this sign which said ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ and it was like fireworks went off inside my skull. I couldn’t hear for three days. I found out later I had wandered into a construction zone where they were blasting. But that’s not the point. I couldn’t go back to the old way of doing things.”
After he was released from the hospital, Dredmond quit his job as a CPA, and started WHEN, World Hunger Ends Now. With a mere $650,000 in his pocket, he began fighting hunger the only way he knew how, one person at a time. There were many hurdles to overcome, not the least of which was the flooded non-profit hunger relief market. Dredmond’s determination and hard work have finally paid off, and WHEN has begun to spread across the country like wildfire. “We have to start thinking of the hunger issue as a global problem,” says Dredmond, “with opportunities right here in our own backyard. Ending hunger anywhere it exists has an immdediate impact on the total amount of hunger in the world.”
Dredmond urges anyone who has ever been hungry, or who has known someone who was hungry to join in the fight against hunger.
“I can’t believe I ate that much” says Tilfred Glamgrove, president of the Manhattan chapter of WHEN “Man, that has got to have put a dent in world hunger!”