Famine event lesson in hunger, poverty

from the Times Herald Record

WARWICK — From noon March 7 until 6 p.m. March 8, 32 youths and four adults participated in the 30-Hour Famine at Warwick United Methodist Church.

The event is organized by World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization that works with children, families and their communities to tackle the causes of poverty and injustice. They created the 30-Hour Famine project not only to raise money, but also to educate kids on how they can make a difference for people all over the world.

The Youth Groups from Warwick United Methodist Church and Warwick Valley Church of the Nazarene united to raise more than $2,000 to battle hunger and poverty. The churches are also trying to promote the sponsorship of individual children and families through the World Vision organization.

Participants in the 30-Hour Famine played a game, which is provided by World Vision, called "Tribe." The group broke into separate "Indonesian tribes," within which each individual was given a specific identity of a child who suffers from hunger and poverty. In one activity, everyone attempted to cover some large mural paper with 29,000 fingerprints, to represent the 29,000 children who die of hunger every day. They learned that many children do not even have clean water to drink.

On Saturday evening, they broke their fast with hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers, pirogies, french fries, brownies, cookies and ice cream sundae.

"As much as we learned to identify with the feeling of hunger the children served through World Vision feel every day, we also gained new appreciation of how blessed we are to have food on our table for three meals, plus snacks, every day," said Janine Dethmers of Warwick.

Their "admission tickets" to the feast were written testimonials about what was most important to them about the experience. One student wrote: "So many people were complaining an hour before we ate that they were 'starving.' We are all in junior high or older, and children 5 and under may go for days without food. What we did is nothing compared to that!"