Around the world more than 800 million people are living with hunger. The images of starving people are burnt into our collective memory. While many feel helpless to act in the face of this global epidemic, one small group of people from Ft. Myers, Florida is literally planting seeds to fight hunger around the world. In this edition of The Visionaries, we travel from the lush green fields of the Southern United States to the deforested mountainsides of Haiti's Caribbean Coastline with Educational Concerns for Hunger Organziation, or ECHO. For the past 18 years, ECHO has partnered with thousands of agricultural missionaries and development workers in 140 countries to help farmers overcome problems like drought, disease and famine. Unlike many international development organizations, which provide handouts to people in need, ECHO chooses to empower people with knowledge. ECHO has developed a strategy that is brilliant in its simplicity. Through its worldwide information network, ECHO shares advances and discoveries in agriculture with more than 3,500 people working in Third World countries. In this episode, we see first-hand how that knowledge is helping people worlds apart. Under the unrelenting tropical sun in Haiti, farmers plant a drought-resistant type of papaya discovered in Taiwan, and reported to ECHO. This small harvest could lead to a new and bountiful crop, and symbolizes the first step towards self-sufficiency for a new generation of Haitians.
