So I am starting to get ready for my church's annual spring 30 Hour Famine. This year, the “Fast” will be held April 24-April 25. The focus is on Hunger. 25,000 children under the age of 5 die every day. Through World Vision (which is the organization that encourages people all over the world to do fasts like this) and the 30 Hour Famine, that number had been getting smaller every year. A few years ago my church did a 30 Hour Famine focused on hunger just like this one but the number of children under the age of 5 who died every day was 28,000. So you can see that by doing fasts like these it really does help.
The 30 Hour Famine is a part of World Vision. All of the money that my church brings in with the fundraisers that we will do will go directly to World Vision to feed hungry children. $1 can feed a child for an entire day. My church’s goal is to raise enough money to feed two children for an entire year, which would cost $730. I believe that my church can do this and possibly we can even raise more money.
My church is doing a funny way to raise money but I think that it is a good way to raise money. We got a toilet and spray painted it purple and stuck our hand prints on it with different colors of paint. We call this toilet the Purple Potty and people in our church are passing it around to each other’s lawns. It sits in somebody’s lawn until they pay a fee to get it off their lawn. Once they have paid to get it off their lawn then they can pick someone else’s lawn for it to go to. People can pay Purple Potty insurance ahead of time which is $15 dollars to not have the potty come to them at all. My family hasn’t paid the insurance because I kind-of want the potty to come to our house so that people in our neighborhood can learn what we are doing and get involved. It hasn’t hit our lawn yet, but maybe it will soon!
Here are some shocking statistics about Hunger…
- 850 million people are hungry.
- That is 13% of the world’s population.
- Every single day, 25,000 children under the age of 5 will die from starvation and preventable, hunger related diseases.
- That is 9.25 MILLION children dying every year.
- 25,000 children dying is equal to:
- The entire Salt Lake Valley dying each month (for those of you living in Salt Lake you can really picture this.)
- 63 Boeing 747’s leaving and not returning every day.
- 21 school buses driving away and not coming back EVERY HOUR of every day.
This is an incredible number of hungry children. In the past ten years, the number of dying children has dropped from 40,000 every day to 25,000 every day. That difference equals 13 school buses every hour.
Together, we can raise money and awareness to keep even more children alive. So please do your part and visit 30hourfamine.org to see ways you can help. Maybe you can get your church or people in your neighborhood and community to do a 30 hour famine to raise money too.
