/Portals/2/logos/__TFMF_2vmsi045wvip5o453zp4sjng_0f3ae265-9b7a-456c-be74-6397a64111c4_0___Selected.jpg en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:46:21 GMT 15 By Alexa Rogers
From Friday, March 18 th to Saturday, March 19th, I didn’t eat for 30 hours. I know, you think I’m crazy right? Why would any 15 year old, perfectly healthy teenager find a reason to go without food for a day and a half? To experience the feeling of hunger that many people have every day and raise money for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization company that strives to fight poverty and hunger around the world. While no food actually enters the bodies of the participants while we do the famine, we are a loud to drink water, juice, and Gatorade to keep our bodies going. We also do service work around Sterling United Methodist Church, which is where I participated in the famine, and play games to keep our minds off of our stomachs. However, these activities do have a purpose and they teach you about the people that eat little to no food every day of their lives. According to World Vision, a child dies from hunger related causes every 10 seconds. That’s 540 children in the 90 minutes we sit in class and are “bored out of our minds” while our teachers educate about things that those children will never be able to learn. And we take that for granted; all of it. Living in the richest county in the United States, we’re on the complete other side of the spectrum from people in impoverished countries such as Mali, Honduras, and Zambia, where World Vision is currently fighting hunger. It’s really heartbreaking that all these things that seem so normal to us would make someone’s life somewhere else That is what really hit me the hardest this year while I did the famine; it is so easy to deny what other people can’t have. I can’t think of many people who walk around every day and think “I am so lucky to have an education” or “I am so lucky that my parents put breakfast on the table for me every morning” or “I so lucky to have all of these clothes in my closet”. And what do we do with all of this stuff that we have? We use it once, if its clothes hopefully a lot more than once, and then we throw it away. Out of sight and out of mind. This was my third year participating in the famine and while I don’t remember being hungry the past two years, this year I really experienced hunger. I don’t know if I didn’t eat enough before or focused on my hunger more this year, but I felt the emptiness of my stomach with every move that I made. With the hunger, I got tired, I got cranky, and I got lazy and I just can’t imagine doing that every day. And it’s terrible to think that’s how someone else lives their life. Do the 30 hours still seem so long now? ]]> Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:57:35 GMT