Think globally, act locally.
Twenty Hapnot Collegiate students took this oft-repeated phrase to heart when they raised over $1,400 for the Lord’s Bounty Food Bank with a 30-hour famine fundraiser.
The official 30 Hour Famine is a World Vision fundraiser in which youth go 30 hours without food and collect pledges to support the global charity’s initiatives to fight hunger, mainly in the developing world.
In past years, Hapnot students have participated in the World Vision event, but this year they decided to keep their fundraising in the community.
The change came as a result of students’ own research. Last year, Rachel Hyska and fellow grade 10 student Lalain Bashir researched the issue of food security in the local area.
“Its worse than you’d think,” Hyska said. “There are quite a few families visiting the food bank regularly. It was eye-opening, and enlightening that this is actually happening in our own small town.”
When students started to think about organizing this year’s fundraiser, they agreed to direct their fundraising dollars to Flin Flon’s food bank instead.
Grade 12 student Nicholas Lies took the lead as a student organizer, asking teachers to supervise the sleepover at the school (which usually involves little sleep) and coordinating activities to keep the hungry teens’ minds off their stomachs.
He said students passed the time by playing computer games, joining in mock sword-fighting battles in the gym, watching movies, and playing hide-and-seek in the empty school, a tradition for participants in the event each year.
“It’s a lot more fun than you’d think,” Lies said.
The event ended with a pancake breakfast served up by teachers early Saturday morning, May 7. The meal was a relief for the participants, who hadn’t eaten or drank anything besides water and juice from midnight Thursday to 6 am Saturday.
While a number of the participants had taken part in the famine before, the students said going without a meal was tough, especially during the lunch hour at school.
“It gave you more empathy,” said grade 10 student Brett Buhler.
During the overnight event, Alison Dallas, vice-president of the Lord’s Bounty Food Bank, came to talk to the students about the food bank’s work, and showed them what a typical family receives during a visit to the food bank.
She also received an oversized cheque from the students for the pledges collected at that point. When the total amount was tallied this week, it came to more than expected, over $1,400.
“It’s terrific,” said Dennis Hydamaka, food distribution chair for the food bank, of the students’ initiative. “It comes at a time that we are having to purchase a lot of staple foods, so it really helps us a lot.”
Hydamaka said the food bank has seen increased demand lately, with a lot of single-parent families accessing resources.
“In the last two days we fed close to 100 people,” he said, on Wednesday,
May 11.
Hydamaka said the food bank has also received regular support throughout the school year from a soup-making initiative headed up by Hapnot students and guidance counsellor Sandra Garinger.
The food bank provides produce and canned goods to the students, who cook up healthy soups in the school’s foods lab and package them in individual containers so they can be frozen and provided to food bank clients.
“It’s much higher quality than a canned soup,” said Hydamaka.
“We try our best to get the healthiest possible food out to our clients. Fortunately we do have the resources to purchase food, and this fundraising by the students certainly is going to help.”
