Students from St. Edmund Preparatory H.S., Sheepshead Bay, worked during the year to reach a goal to help alleviate the problem of hunger locally and globally. To do this, the students along with moderator, Kevin Raphael, assistant principal of student affairs, took on the Hunger Awareness Challenge.
“Eradicating extreme hunger and poverty is the No. 1 Millennium Development Goal of the UN and the more research we did, the more energized we became to do our part to help in some way,” Raphael said. “We decided to raise awareness of the problem, first in our school, and then in our community.”
To set the stage for the project, this past September, a volunteer from a local food pantry came to the school and told the students that their small pantry provides food assistance to 6,000 families a month in Brooklyn. The student body had not realized the issue was so prevalent and it existed right in their own neighborhood.
The students learned that the global statistics are equally as disturbing:
- 1 in 9 people in the world live on less than $1.25/day
- 800 million people go to bed hungry at night and of that number, roughly 90 million are children under the age of 5
- 60 percent of the world’s hungry are women
- Hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined
After hearing the statistics, the school went into action and came up with a plan.
Making a Difference
Once every eight school days, the students decorated the cafeteria with statistical reminders of those who are in need.
On that day, everyone was challenged to walk in the shoes of those less fortunate and restrict their spending for food and other non-travel expenses to $2.00 (the World Food Bank’s definition of moderate poverty) and donate a portion of the money to the yearlong project.
The students then reached out to Father Peter Rayder, pastor of Blessed Trinity in Breezy Point. Father Rayder allowed the students to talk to his parishioners about the hunger project where many donated money to the cause.
To date, the St. Edmund Prep community has raised over $12,000 with the help of the parishioners of Blessed Trinity.
Some of the money will be awarded to needy families in Brooklyn and Queens. The balance of the money will be awarded in Havana, Cuba to either needy families or the money will help run a daycare center.
At this time, the school is planning a trip to Cuba in September of 2016 to deliver the money and work with children at a day care center run by a Catholic Church.
While in Cuba students will tour the city and various Catholic churches. They will attend mass and are making plans to meet the newly installed archbishop. Fundacion Amistad, a humanitarian aid group, is assisting the school with the arrangements.
To find out more about how to help in feeding the hungry in the community, see the listings of Food Pantry Services posted in the Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens website: ccbq.org/what-we-do/outreach-integration-services.
