By Rachael Clinton, Executive Editor
The holidays bring something special. It’s the warmth of a fireplace and hot chocolate, the enlightening holiday spirit from Christmas lights and music, the reassuring love from our family and friends through presents, cards and extra time spent together. This is also the comfort a large number of us take for granted, something we have never imagined living without.
America has made it so easy to get consumed by buying presents, seeing the latest Christmas movie or planning the next ski trip that we are too concerned about what we “need” to even consider the desperate needs of others.
These are needs far more important than us receiving the latest electronic. It’s the need of someone receiving a single meal, just simply nourishing food.
As we feast and splurge, especially during this time of the season, third-world countries are left in the dust, starving and pleading for help.
It is easy to walk right past the bell ringers in front of Jewel, trying to collect money to give to organizations that will help the needy. It does takes less time and effort to just turn down the opportunity to volunteer at an organization such as Feed My Starving Children or the opportunity to support a child in a foreign country.
But we are also turning down an opportunity to help save someone’s life, be the start to a changed generation or being a part of an impact to bring the world hunger crisis under control.
There are over 925 million malnourished people in the world. In Ethiopia alone, there are over 13.4 million children under the age of five who are in critical condition due to the lack of food, according to the UNICEF. This is a huge problem.
That’s not to say our nation doesn’t have its own problems; we just happen to have the exact opposite. On this side of the world, we struggle to lose weight, the extra couple pounds from Thanksgiving, or maybe the winter blues.
The epidemic here is being overweight, and over 1 trillion humans are suffering from being overweight, according to USA Right Now. On the other side of the world, too many struggle to scrounge up enough food to keep them living another day. Over 14,000 people die from hunger daily. This epidemic is something too many look past, are unaware of or simply chose not to participate to help with.
I have been raised in a family where giving back to those in need is just as important as an education. My parents’ beliefs on passing blessings on has greatly impacted my life, as well as the receivers’ lives of whom we got to bless. My parents have made it a goal to make sure my siblings and I are well aware of the world beyond our comfort zone, a world where many are not nearly as fortunate as we are, a world where pain and misery is reality.
Starting at a young age, I got to experience the humbleness it takes and joy you receive from giving first hand. On a vacation over Christmas, my parents had decided that instead of our family receiving more gifts we were going to bless a family that didn’t have the means to do so. I will remember this change in tradition forever, a change that made a difference.
The teaching of giving back, and joyfully blessing others did not stop there. My parents always encouraged the idea of a mission trip to widen our world views and get the unique experience to serve and that is when I got the opportunity to go to Aldama, Mexico, where I was placed in the middle of poverty and almost in shock.
As my brother earlier traveled to Haiti and my mother later traveled to Africa, third-world hunger and poverty was definitely brought to my family’s attention. The need to help wasn’t just an idea but was put into action.
I do thank my parents for raising me to have such an awareness of other less fortunate than I, as well as being exposed to the world hunger epidemic. I also now want to make it my goal to inform and open the minds of all who are innocently oblivious to such rapid needs, needs that can be tamed.
It is hard to wrap our minds around the pain and misery that so many go through their lives feeling, just do to the simple lack of food, something most of us take for granted daily. But you can make an impact. It really doesn’t take much.
Feed My Starving Children is a great organization where individuals get involved to help package meals that are sent out to different places in the world directly. This is an easy fun way to make a difference, as junior Brooke Harner discovered when she began volunterring.
“I like how everyone gets the opportunity to work together and take time out of their day to help the less fortunate,” Harner said. “It’s a cool place to be, you get to have fun while serving others.
Another simple way to be a part of something that makes a huge impact is sponsoring a child in a third-world country through an organization called Compassion.
For a little over $30 a month, you feed a child that you personally are directly sponsoring and get to bless them by providing food and even an education. I have seen what this minimal amount of investment on a child’s life can do, as my family corresponds with our sponsor child, 11-year-old Adama. It’s amazing how even though we’re thousands of miles apart, the impact we have on her life is as if we are right next to her every step of the way.
Junior Tanner Andrews takes part on stopping world-hunger by promoting the One Meal One Day campaign, where teenagers are challenged to give up one meal out of their day, once a year to donate the money, which they would have spent on food to send to Africa to feed the children there.
“You don’t even get close to the feeling of starvation so many feel, but just a glimpse of what an empty stomach can be like,” Andrews said. “The small amount of money you donate goes so much farther in a third-world country than it would on your ice cream for lunch.”
Sure, it is easy to go about our day, the rest of the year, or maybe even the rest of our lives without thinking twice about those dying from something we over indulge in multiple times a day.
But just remember it is just as easy to make a difference, even if it is just giving up a weekly Gingerbread latte from Starbucks that usually ends up adding to the difficulty of getting your jeans on in the morning anyway, and instead saving up and sending that money off to those whom it will save.