THOUGHTFUL TEENS: Starving for a taste of poverty

from Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

By Caitlin Murray/murrayc@gnnewspaper.com
Greater Niagara Newspapers

TOWN OF TONAWANDA — Anna Auernhamer, a ninth-grader at Newfane High School, hadn’t eaten in about 26 hours. To make matters worse, she was just informed she’s blind.

Luckily for her, it was just an exercise.

Nearly 75 students from Lockport and surrounding communities participated this weekend in a 30-hour famine to experience the hardship of living in a developing country.

The short span of food abstinence was just a small taste of the struggles for those starving, though.

“Thirty hours is trivial compared to what these people go through. They don’t eat for days,” said participant Emily DeSoto, an 11th-grader at North Tonawanda High School.

The group of teens stopped eating Friday and stayed overnight at First Trinity Lutheran Church in the Town of Tonawanda where they played “tribe games,” competitions simulating the problems plaguing impoverished nations.

In one game, teams of students raced to wash their feet with jugs of water fastest. But after the game ended is when the message became clear.

Evan Gaertner, pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Niagara Falls, asked the students how it would feel to have to drink the water they just bathed in.

“They get that sense of what it means to say that

50 percent of the world does not have access to clean drinking water,” he said.

Students were sponsored during the 30-hour lock-in and the money raised will go to World Vision, an organization that works to improve the lives of those in developing countries.

Each participant was aiming to earn at least $30, which is enough to feed a child in a developing nation for a month, Gaertner said.

Some adults may look at teenagers as having bad attitudes, but Tyler Helton, a 10th-grader at Lockport High School, said that’s not true.

“I think the more teenagers do things like this, the more we get rid of that bad rap,” he said.

Contact reporter Caitlin Murray