by John Dempsey
A group of area high school students tackled the problems hunger and extreme poverty and found it may prove to be easier done by individuals and groups than the governments of the world.
During the afternoon wrapup session of the Rotary World Affairs Conference, Pioneer student Evan Daily noted “world hunger will not cure itself. It’s going to take time. We just need to figure out how to do it.”
The Rotary World Affairs Conference is an annual event that brings in high school students from Logansport, Cass, Pioneer and Delphi. A different topic is chosen and students break out into small groups to address different questions raised during the early part of the event.
Logansport was one of eight hosts throughout the state for the conference.
Bridget Floyd of Delphi has been on a mission trip to Jamaica, but found the conference enlightening.
“I’ve seen poverty,” she said, “but I didn’t know the statistics and that hits you hard.
“This gave me ideas of what I can do to help. I always thought, ‘I’m a teenager and I can’t do a lot.’ This has given me ideas about what I can do and what I can accomplish myself.”
Among those statistics were these facts:
• There are 852 million people suffering from malnutrition in the world.
• An estimated 10.1 million children die before they turn 5.
• Approximately 25,000 people, including children, die of hunger every day.
“I was upset by the number of children who die before they turn 5,” Logansport’s Jordyn Wolfe said.
Something that surprised many was that hunger exists in the United States and in Logansport.
As moderator Mike Richardson noted, “World hunger is not just a world problem, but it’s also a problem here in Logansport.”
Two students related their own personal experiences, noting that their families have gone to pantries, taken backpacks of food home and received it from others to feed their families.
“We didn’t like doing that, get food from other people, but we had to do that to eat. If we didn’t, we didn’t eat,” one of them said.
Joel Gibbs of Logansport knew hunger and famine were issues.
“But this brought out that it is more widespread than I originally thought,” he said.
“Learning about how much hunger there really was” surprised Wolfe. “It didn’t seem to be a problem here until others started telling their stories.
“It hurt to hear how kids in Logansport have lost homes and don’t have food or support. It didn’t seem prominent until I heard others kids tell bout it.”
Britney Parker, another Logansport student, agreed with Wolfe.
“To hear others actually open up about it and that it was here in Logansport, that got my attention,” she said.
To address the problem, Logansport’s Kaity Collins believes she can help by making herself an example of what can be done.
“I feel I’m an open-minded person and I have to do things that effect the world. You can’t expect everyone else to do it,” she said. “It’s important to figure out a way I can affect world hunger myself than to expect the world to solve the problem.
“You have to let your actions speak for your beliefs and not necessarily preach them to everyone.”
