30 Hour Famine helps those in need
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March 17, 2012 • By Brenda Boody '15
Filed under Features
“I’m so hungry” may be the first thing out of your mouth when you get home from a long day of school. Think of when you don’t finish your dinner and your parents say “There are starving kids in Africa that would be happy to have that meal now to finish.” In order to experience what those living in poverty do, you can take part in a 30 Hour Famine. The objective is to raise awareness and stop the hunger epidemic. It is a means to take action.
The 30 Hour Famine is where participants go 30 hours with out food. It is a event through a organization called World Vision. World Vision tries to get people to sponsor kids in need, raise money for them to help, and much more. Participants start to raise money about a month ahead. They go door to door and ask neighbors and friends, and you can even set up an online account.
Those that participated felt that the 30 Hour Famine was a fun time. They met new people, shared laughter, and had a good time. Brenda Boody participated in the famine on February 24th and 25th. The famine had games, tribes, worship, prayer stations, and a large dinner at the end. Thirty hours may seem like a long time without food, but Boody has completed three famines.
During the experience, you get what is called a tribe. Your tribe has about eight people, and you are from a country that is in great poverty. This year the tribes were Afghanistan, Zambia, Bolivia, Bangladesh, and Kenya. Throughout the weekend, your tribe becomes your family. They are the people you connect with and the people you play games with. Participants say they will never forget these people. At the end of the famine, the tribe that has the most points gets to eat first.
The games played at the famine are different every year. This year they had to find a nutritious meal, hunt the deadliest predator, find water for the family, cross the river for survival, and go on a food scavenger hunt. To find a nutritious meal, they had to find the balloons of their tribes color and pop it with their butt and bring the paper that was inside to our tribe’s line. The full nutritious meal was a banana, meat, grain and water. The experience teaches the participants how hard it is for people in foreign countries to find a nutritious meal.
The second game was hunt down the deadliest predator. In this game there was a flashlight taken apart and hidden in the room along with a blanket. There was one “mosquito” that was going around tagging people and giving them malaria. Once they found the flashlight, they had to put it together and shine it on the mosquito to kill him and end malaria. The blanket acted as a bed-net. This game tried to teach about the malaria epidemic in Africa.
The third game was find clean water. There were bins of water scattered around the church they were in that had an item assigned to that bin. Each member of your tribe had to take one of the items in your bucket search for the bin of water and take it back to your bucket and dump it in. They had to fill the bucket up to a certain point. This game tried to teach how hard it is to find clean water and how little you get when you find it.
The fourth game they had was to cross a fake river and get the tribe across. There were two lines of tape on the floor each tribe got four pieces of newspaper and had to get from one side to the other. But the catch is one foot has to be on every piece of newspaper or it got taken away, and if you fell off, you “lost” your leg and had to use one. If you fell again, you were dead.
Last but not least was the food scavenger hunt, a game they play every year to collect donations for the Food Bank. You have to drive around and go door to door to collect as many donations as you could. Each donation is one point except the bonus items. These items are things that the Food Bank is in desperate need of.
At the famine, they also do service projects. This year they was Pitman Manor, a thrift store, serving breakfast and doing nails for the homeless. At Pitman Manor, they played bingo with old people. At the thrift store, they separated clothes, and at the last one, they served breakfast to hungry homeless people and did the ladies nails to help them feel pretty.
They also do worship and prayer stations every famine. Worship is when they sing and dance to Christian music as a group. Prayer stations are a time for reflection. This year there were four: Worship station (singing and videos with others), Confession ( look at the board of sins, think about you own and tell a leader and get a blessing for forgiveness), Prayer room (write a prayer and talk to God), Silent room (sit and think to yourself and talk to God and stay silent).
Finally, dinner Saturday night was sauce less pasta, soup, peanut butter and jelly, soda, muffins, salad, and rolls. At dinner all of these things were so good. Dinner was everyone’s favorite part of the famine.
This year at the famine the participants had a lot of fun. They bonded with kids in their tribe got closer to those they already knew and helped people. The feeling many had at the famine was that they were helping thousands of kids. Forty participants raised $___________ that can feed ___ number of kids for a year.
You can also sponsor a child by donating $35 a month to an organization called World Vision and that money helps one specific child. You can sponsor a boy or girl choose from many countries, a child hurt by AIDs, hunger, or even just a child in need. Your money goes toward an education, food, clean water, healthcare, and housing. To sponsor a child, go to http://www.worldvision.org you can make a difference.
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