I just got finished reading this story from CNN on the starvation facing children in Ethiopia.

“A year of drought and soaring food prices” has led to shortages facing tens of thousands of children all across the country, CNN reports.

“We have nothing to feed our children,“ said one elder in Egu Village. “We are losing our children day by day.“

In addition to having more people in need this year because of a lack of rain to plant a second crop, “there is a critical shortfall in the supply of therapeutic foods used to treat children with severe acute malnutrition,“ according to one UNICEF official.

According to the CNN report, “UNICEF estimates six million Ethiopian children under the age of five are at risk and more than 120,000 have only about a month to live.“

Read that again.

One hundred and twenty thousand children have only a month to live ... before they starve to death.

More from the story:

The UN’s children’s agency is appealing for $10 million to pay for emergency needs of more than seven million children under five as well as pregnant and lactating mothers in 325 drought-affected districts.

The World Food Programme (WFP) supplies the emergency food for UNICEF, but rising food prices mean it could not guarantee aid for all the areas in need.

“Unless you get immediate assistance the risk is, you fall into severe malnutrition and eventually death, so unless our supporters come in immediately for this we fear that is what is going to happen in the country,“ said Jakob Mikkelse, the WFP’s nutrition and education chief.

My stomach was already churning from reading that as I sit next to my nine-month-old baby girl, who is munching away on her Cheerios. Then I looked in the CNN sidebar: One of the today’s top stories has to do with that Obama-won’t-wear-a-flag-lapel-pin pseudo-scandal.

Children are starving to death. And we are talking about flag pins.

That makes me sick. 

So what are we going to do about it?

I told you last week about about WorldVision (read the post here). Go to WorldVision’s home page here and click on the graphic that reads, “Global Food Crisis: A Silent Killer.“ You will be able to choose Ethiopia from a drop-down list of WorldVision-served countries where hunger is widespread. One little girl waiting for help is Likyelesh. She lives in a community severely affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis. She is a second-grader whose favorite subject is the national language of her country. She loves to play volleyball. She’s hungry. For $35 a month, you can help her.

Other hungry children are waiting for help in Haiti, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. You can’t help them all. But you can help one—or two, or more, as your circumstances allow.

Back to Ethiopia: I had another idea. UNICEF says it needs $10 million to save those 120,000 children from starvation. That’s $83.33 per child.

But what if America’s Fortune 1000 companies made this their charity action of the month? Split into 1000 parts, each company’s share is $10,000. Surely each Fortune 1000 company can afford $10,000. Some—like Exxon Mobil, with 2005 profits topping $35 billion —can afford to do much more.

Is it worth $10,000 to save 120,000 children from starving to death?

That works out to about eight and a half cents per child.

So what is the price of a child’s life? Is it $83.33? Is it $35? Or is it eight and a half cents?

Check out the list of Fortune 1000 companies here. Do your part—and demand that they do theirs.