How much food does your household go through in a week? What are your go-to family meals? And how much do you spend on food? You can get a glimpse of how others answered these questions in Oxfam’s new photo series, which depicts people from around the globe with one week’s food supply for their families.

Building on an idea that originated with 2005′s  Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, the new images feel especially timely now, when reports about half of the world’s food going to waste vie for space with news about rising global food prices. According to a recent article accompanying some of the photos in the UK Independent, “There is deep injustice in the way food is grown and distributed … the world’s poorest people spend 50-90 percent of their income on food, compared with just 10-15 percent in developed countries.”

As you can probably guess, the families’ diets differ depending on where they live. But if if there’s one common thread that links these images, it’s that we all have to eat. We all face challenges and successes when it comes to feeding our families. And we can all help to make the food system fairer for everyone.

So check out seven highlights below. Then tell us in the comments: What does your week’s food supply look like? How does your family measure up?

Shahveller, Azerbaijan

Photo: David Levene/Oxfam

Mirza Bakhishov, 47, his wife, Zarkhara, 37, and two sons, Khasay, 18 and Elchin, 15, own a small plot of land where they grow cotton and wheat as well as animal feed. “Our small cattle and poultry [are] everything for us. All our income and livelihood is dependent on them,” said Bakhishov.

Vavuniya, Sri Lanka

Photo: Abir Abdullah/Oxfam

Selvern, 70, far right, and her daughters have been members of Oxfam’s local dairy cooperative for four years. Her youngest daughter Sukitha, second from right, works at the cooperative and is also trained as a vet. Selvern gets up at 5:30 every morning to help her daughters milk their cows; she sends most of the milk to the co-op with Sukitha and uses the remainder to make cream and ghee for the family.

Mecha, Ethiopia

Photo: Tom Pietrasik/Oxfam

A week’s food supply for Wubalem Shiferaw, her husband Tsega, and 4-year-old daughter Rekebki includes flour, vegetable oil, and a paste of spices called berbere. Tsega works as a tailor, while Wubalem follows a long local tradition and supplements her income with honey production. An Oxfam-supported cooperative helped Wubalem make the transition to modern beekeeping methods, which produce greater yields.

Yegeghus, Armenia

Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Panos

The Josephyan family from with their weekly food supply, which includes wheat flour, dried split peas, sugar, and cooking oil. The family supplements their diet with eggs laid by their chickens and wild greens from the fields.

London, UK

Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Oxfam

Ian Kerr, 30, with his family and a week’s food supplied by a charity food bank. Ian left his job to become a full-time carer to his disabled son Jay-J, 12. Also pictured are his daughter Lillian, 5, and mother-in-law Linda, 61. Kerr says the family’s favorite food is spaghetti Bolognese, but Lillian says her favorite is Jaffa Cakes.

Kaftarkhana, Tajikistan

Photo: Andy Hall/Oxfam

BiBi-Faiz Miralieba and her family, from left to right: son Siyoushi, 11, niece Gulnoya Shdova, 14, and children Jomakhon, 6, Shodmon, 9, and Jamila,13. Like many women in rural areas of Tajikistan, Miralieba is now the head of her household as her husband has migrated to Russia to find work.

Gutu, Zimbabwe

Photo: Annie Bungeroth/Oxfam

Ipaishe Masvingise and her family with their food for the week, which includes grains and groundnuts as well as fruits like pawpaw and oranges. Masvingise, a farmer, said she sells extra grain from her harvests to pay for school fees and medical costs, and to support members of her extended family who don’t own their own land.

Miriam Aschkenasy and Oxfam Ambassador Emile Hirsch attend a community meeting in Mudzi, Zimbabwe. Photo: Nabil Elderkin / Oxfam America

In April, Oxfam Ambassador Emile Hirsch traveled to Zimbabwe with Oxfam’s Miriam Aschkenasy and Lyndsay Cruz to see first-hand Oxfam’s response to the cholera crisis that has hit the region.

Below, Aschkenasy, Oxfam’s public health specialist, writes about the second day of their five-day trip.

I am always so tired at the end of the day in Mudzi, a region in the northeast part of the country where Oxfam has been working on the cholera outbreak. After a two-hour car ride from Harare we arrived at the Pumpkin Hotel–the only hotel in this region. We settled in (Emile got the suite with the waterbed, and I got the one next door) and had some lunch: Eggs and sadza, a finely ground cornmeal boiled in water.

After lunch, we headed out to look at a bore hole–a narrow well drilled deep into the ground.  Mudzi has hundreds of them. They’re the source of drinking water for many people in this rural region. This one was a half-hour-drive away on a bumpy, dry road–and when we arrived, we found hundreds of community members waiting for us.

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In its second life, a soda bottle becomes a portable hand-washer to fight the spread of cholera in Zimbabwe.

I rode the train into work this morning with a friend who grew up in Malaysia. She now lives a comfortable life north of Boston, as do I. But we’re both keenly aware of how fleeting that comfort can be if you don’t have the means to support it. Could we, as Americans, make do with less? Read the rest of this entry »

Poking around the ReliefWeb site the other day, I stumbled on its analytics page—the place where it lists how many visitors come to the site and the kinds of information they might find there. Administered by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, ReliefWeb bills itself as a global hub for people who need—or want—to find out what’s happening  with humanitarian emergencies around the world. And guess what? In an age of supposed “compassion fatigue,” the number of visitors to the site climbed by 10 percent last year. Read the rest of this entry »

Villagers work on repairing a broken well, known as a bore hole, in the Mudzi district of Zimbabwe.

I have just returned from Zimbabwe where a cholera outbreak has now sickened more than 80,000 people and killed more than 3,700 of them. Clean water and public health education are critical in fighting the spread of this disease. Oxfam and its local partner, Single Parents Widow(er)s Support Network, are providing both of those things. Below are a couple of audio blogs that capture some of that work.

In the first blog, public health educators are singing a song–one of several they use–to two large gatherings of villagers. The song is in Shona and it’s advising people who use the bush as a bathroom to properly cover their feces afterwards. The second audio blog tells the story of Ronald Marozva, an engineer who travels around rural Mudzi repairing the broken wells so many people depend on.

Cholera Song

Mudzi Water

Lilly Ledbetter sued her employer Goodyear 11 years ago because she found out she was not being paid as well as men in the same positions. But the Supreme Court threw out the case because she did not file it within six months of when the discrimination had occurred.

I just saw her on television standing next to President Obama when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which according to this story in the Washington Post will “[expand] the time frame in which workers can sue for discrimination they have experienced based on gender, race, national origin or religion.” Read the rest of this entry »

As 2008 winds down, we’re highlighting photos we think best capture Oxfam’s work this year. Here is one of my favorites–with an explanation why. More to come from others.

Loko Dadacha, photographed by Sarah Livingston

In this supposed season of joy, trouble fills our world: a cholera outbreak and widespread hunger in Zimbabwe, a food crisis in Afghanistan that’s threatening five million people, bursts of violence in the eastern provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo that have forced a quarter of a million people from their homes, a conflict in Darfur that has dragged on for nearly six years and wrecked the lives of millions of Sudanese—the list goes on. And that’s the killer. Where is the hope in this bottomless pit of suffering?

I think I know. Read the rest of this entry »

Jestina Mukoko, missing since 3 December. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America

December 10 is International Human Rights Day, when we set aside a moment to consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was completed at the UN 60 years ago. This year we can also consider the 18 human rights activists in Zimbabwe who have disappeared in the last month. One of them, Jestina Mukoko, was abducted from her home at five in the morning last Wednesday.

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In a market in South Africa, a woman sells pins to commemorate those lost to AIDS. Photo by Emily Farr

Emily Farr, a humanitarian livelihoods specialist for Oxfam America, writes about the flood of memories that washed over her at the close of World AIDS Day.

By Emily Farr

Yesterday was December 1, 2008: World AIDS Day. This year I didn’t do much to mark the occasion, but I did wear a beaded red AIDS ribbon pinned to my shirt. I bought about a dozen of these pins a couple of weeks ago at a market in South Africa as a little memento for some colleagues, and had enough foresight to keep one for myself.

A few times during the day I’d glanced down, startled, having forgotten about my pin. It wasn’t until I began cooking dinner later that evening that I took the time to stop and reflect on why I wore that pin all day. Read the rest of this entry »

Ntombizodwa Marufu carries water to her home in central Zimbabwe. Photo: Annie Bungeroth / Oxfam

The first headline I saw yesterday morning predicted a dire future for one of the world’s most troubled nations: “Zimbabwe may soon collapse.”

African National Congress president Jacob Zuma attributed this warning to former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and former US president Jimmy Carter, both of whom were denied entrance to Zimbabwe last weekend as part of a delegation from the conflict-resolution group The Elders.

“Zimbabwe may soon collapse.” For some reason, this particular phrase keeps ringing in my mind, even though I feel like I can’t even fully understand what it means. How can a whole country, all its infrastructure, just fall apart? What does that mean for the millions of people who live there? When does it cease to exist? And what is the threshold—the point of no return—when things can’t possibly get any worse?

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