Don't explode your brain

This post was originally published at Yellow Inkling.

I had a great discussion with our current Service Learning group about what can practically be done – by you and I - about poverty in this world. But wait – what’s a Service Learning group?

At World Hunger Relief, we host several Service Learning groups a year. Part of the mission of the Farm is to “educate those with an economic abundance on methods of conserving and sharing resources.” Our Service Learning program, along with our fun-filled (and rabbit poop, worm, goat, chicken, garden-filled) Farm tours, and sending farmers off the Farm to speak, are ways we do this in our community. And...surprise! One of my main jobs here on the Farm is to manage all three of these education programs.

Our Service Learning groups come from schools, churches, families, and universities. They stay for varying lengths, from 8 hours up to two weeks. During Spring Break time (March-April) we are super busy with several Alternative Spring Break groups from colleges around the country.

Right now we have a National Summer Service Team from University of Michigan on the Farm. They’re one of our longer- staying groups just a day shy of two weeks. They’ve been an ideal group and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them.

Last night I hosted one of my favorite Service Learning activities for them – Hunger Meal. The activity includes a meal, a presentation, and a discussion at the end. At the beginning, each participant chooses a life situation card. The card includes a name, country of residence, income bracket, and a short description of daily life – struggles, work, family, etc. Each participant is then fed according to the card they randomly picked.

I try to schedule this activity after a hard day’s work and the groups are asked not to snack between lunch and the activity which typically takes place during the evening. The “high-income” people are seated at the table with a ridiculous amount of food, usually including a balanced meal with meat, several beverage selections, and dessert. “Middle-income” participants are seated in a chair and are given beans and rice in a bowl with a spoon and a glass of water. “Low-income” participants are seated on the ground and given a large pot of rice to share amongst themselves, along with glasses of “dirty water” (water colored light brown with a splash of coffee or tea). It usually breaks down to about 15% of the group being high-income, 25% middle-income, and 60% low-income.

While the participants eat, they share their cards and I present current statistics and issues regarding world hunger and poverty.

In all honesty, although this is my favorite Service Learning activity to lead, it’s a difficult one. It’s difficult to talk about hunger and poverty in regards to statistics and generalities. In fact, in the past, I’ve often avoided talking about these problems because I didn’t know of a good way without mentioning the often sterile and meaningless statistics. But after first learning how to lead this activity I realized something – some people have never heard these statistics; they might know that there are hungry people in the world, but they don’t realize that it’s a sixth of earth’s population. I’ve learned that it’s okay to start with: currently, there are 1.6 billion people living on less than $2 a day – 900 million people in this world go hungry every day.

I say this to people who, at this point in the day, are very hungry themselves, given a handful of rice after a many hours of hard work. Then, I move closer to home – Texas is the second hungriest state in the Union – 15% of people living in Texas go hungry every day. After presenting the dry facts (that may be less dry with rumbling stomachs), I share what the Farm is doing and what they can do themselves. Last night we had a great discussion about this.

The issue was this: what can we practically do about poverty in the world? The problem is a big one and if we were to think about all the complexities at the same time and worry about and try to solve all of them, our heads would explode our pink brains everywhere. Instead, we discussed a few important steps. If you are wondering about what you can do, read on. This is what we came up with.

1. Education – educate yourself about what’s going on. Familiarize yourself with some statistics. I told the group last night that they were in fact doing something about poverty and hunger by taking that first step: coming to the farm and learning about what’s going on in Waco, Texas, our country, and the world. You can start with our links. Quick intros like 12 Myths About World Hunger are also a good start.
2. People – surround yourself with like-minded people, people who care about these issues and want to learn more, too. They don’t have to have the same ideas as you – in fact, the purpose of finding like-minded people is to learn from them and share perspectives, while also being encouraged. This was one of the reasons why I wanted to come to the Farm. These people are everywhere – your school, your church, maybe your family, your friends (exhibit A: the lovely specimens pictured above.) There may be groups near you that are already meeting and doing something (think Texas Hunger Initiative, McLennan County Hunger Coalition, Heart of Texas Urban Gardening Coalition, etc).
   
3. Resources and Your One Thing – As people that live in America, we have to start looking at where we are putting our resources. This is often the hardest step. Even those who don’t consider themselves “rich” have enormous amounts of resources (money, time, influences). As we talked about this last step, we decided that the best way to handle this is to start small. Pick one part of your life to examine. A few years ago, when James and I first started looking specifically at the issue of hunger and how it relates to the food system, we decided to pick one thing to change.

I started with my eggs. We eat a lot of eggs and I knew that most of the eggs sold in grocery stores were produced by chickens that were abused, pumped full of grain (which could be used elsewhere) and antibiotics, and cared for by people who are often abused themselves by employers. And so we concentrated on eggs: just finding a supplier for eggs that I knew, either through friends or the farmer’s market, or even getting a few of my own chickens. After we did that, we went on to milk, then meat. But we took it one thing at a time. And yes, sometimes that one thing took six months to solve, find, or incorporate into our lives. But since we did gradually, it didn’t make our brains go ka-boom-splat.

Maybe you drink an insane amount of coffee – maybe that could be your “one thing.” Take time and find out where your coffee comes from. With coffee being one of the biggest reasons why modern slavery exists, you could take some time and find a Fair Trade supplier or talk to your local coffee shop owner about serving Fair Trade coffee.

So, go! I release you from this ridiculously long blog post. Go learn and educate – go find those like-minded people (come to the Farm!) – and find and start with your one thing.

Oh, and if you get stuck, drop us a line at the Farm.

(Maybe your thing is Vodka? Solved. Ha.)