When we watched her cuddling an emaciated extraterrestrial on the big screen as a little girl I’m sure not very many of us would have imagined Drew Barrymore would grow up to be an advocate for the world’s hungry. But, alas, life is unpredictable.
Yes, it is true. Actress Drew Barrymore has been named an ambassador against hunger for the World Food Program. The global humanitarian program provides food aid to more than 90 million poor people, including 58 million hungry children who live in 80 of the world’s poorest countries.
Members of the media have been following the 32-year-old actress as she visited Washington and New York this week. Barrymore is advocating legislation in Congress to increase money for school meals from $100 million per year to $300 million per year within five years. She also spoke to lawmakers about her recent trip to Kenya, where she toured World Food Program supported school meal projects.
“I can’t think of any issue that is more important than working to see that no schoolchild in this world goes hungry,” Barrymore said. “Feeding a child at school is such a simple thing, but it works miracles. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
She may not be helping feed the world’s poor—well, not yet anyway—but singer Courtney Love is contemplating how she can make a positive impact on those in need.
A posting on Love’s website reveals that she is doing Buddhist chants as she struggles to decide what to do with her late husband Kurt Cobain’s possessions. (Cobain committed suicide in 1994.)
“I chanted two hours tonight and really thought about where the money should go,” Love wrote recently on her website. She goes on to say that she can’t decide whether she should conduct a private sale or host an auction and use the proceeds to establish a foundation. Either way Love says she hopes to “do good works with the proceeds, works that would create artists and promote them to stop bullying, to deal with self-destructive fantasies and suicidal ideation at a young age.”
What’s more, she says she doesn’t want Cobain’s possessions ending up in the wrong hands. Love says ideally they should go to someone who is “genuinely a Kurt fan who … would play the guitars and use things and would value his stuff incredibly.”
If I were Love I would steer away from the auction idea and stick with the private sale.