Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Fast so that others may eat

Last Thursday and Friday I attended the Kansas Hunger Dialogue with President White. While we were there, many wonderful speakers and students addressed both global and local hunger issues and what college campuses can do about it. One such speaker, Tony Hall, a former legislator, spoke about a previous demonstration he conducted in the form of a water-only fast for 28 days. Hall is doing another multiple-day fast and he begins his fast on Marcy 28th.

To join Tony Hall in his fight against world hunger, other campuses around the state will be fasting on the 28th as well. The good news is, the 28th is the day after Spring Break, and I know most of us will feel like we have eaten too much over Break anyways, so the fast comes at a perfect time to renew our spirit and refocus on school.


Each meal we eat in the cafeteria costs roughly $1.80 per person. So, if we even hand half of the student body fast for all three meals, we could donate $1,350 dollars to Numana. Why Numana? In light of the recent tsunami and earthquake, Numana is scrambling to send food to those who have been displaced by these natural disasters. I realize the victims of the natural disasters are not necessarily also victims of chronic hunger, however Numana  also addresses global hunger and a donation to their organization helps them fund these projects, regardless of their cause.

Please, please, please reply to my stuent-announce if you are interested in doing this fast. You must sign up by this Friday, March 18th. Fasting for one day is the least we can do to offer our resources elsewhere, and call attention, even if it is just to alert ourselves, to the issue of global and local hunger.

- Julia Huxman

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Numana Hunger Dialogue

I am here in Kansas City attending the Kansas Hunger Dialogue with President White. This event is hosted by Rick McNary (Andrew McNary's dad) who is the CEO of Numana. Remember when they came to do a packaging even on our campus to send food to Haiti? We got to package again today too.

The cool thing about it is that twenty colleges and universities from Kansas are here with one or two administrators and a student so we can talk about how to address global hunger on our campuses. It has been so cool to hear what other students are doing. For example, a senior who is actually from Auburn University in Alabama talked about how his school has a Minor in Hunger Studies and that they have a club on campus that stages awareness events regularly on their campus. I think all of us have been inspired by the speakers and the ideas that have been generated from their presentations. I mean one BILLION people in the world are facing chronic hunger this year!

Tomorrow I will get to talk about what Bethel is doing to address global hunger. I know, we don't have a specific organization on campus that addresses hunger, but I am going to talk about how our students get the opportunity to see the affects of hunger first hand by traveling. Those of you that went to Mexico and Haiti, I am using your stories to illustrate this, so thank you for sharing them with us during Convo.

I will post more tomorrow about the second day of the conference. So stay tuned!!
If you want to check out some websites,
http://www.feedthefuture.gov/
http://www.universitiesfightingworldhunger.org/

- Julia Huxman