Today I volunteered on campus with the Wartburg Youth day. For those who are unfamiliar, middle school students from Lutheran churches come and participate in activities, discussion, and worship for a day on campus. They are centered around a different topic every year. This year it was hunger.
I had the pleasure of only working with 5 middle school students. I was really apprehensive starting out because I don't consider myself the best leader, and I overall felt unsure about the day. I had the schedule, but specifics weren't really given. But once everything started it turned out to be pretty easy. The students in my group were very nice and behaved themselves well. One was PB's son, so that was pretty neat, too.
The day started out with worship led by Hope Overflow. After that, we all headed to the ballrooms to start the hunger-related activities. The first was a hunger simulation where we all had paper bags with an identity stapled to them. I, for instance, was a 33-year-old woman from the UK that had a good, steady job and lived more than comfortably. My bag had quite a few M&Ms whereas others who represented low-income people had only 1 or 2 M&Ms in their bag. There was a power point projected that led us in discussion. The discussion went pretty well. All the students had insightful and meaningful things to say about hunger and how it affects others and how we can help.
However, I knew deep down inside all they wanted to do was eat the M&Ms that were tempting them. Because I had such an abundance of the candies, I told them they could all have some of mine if they wanted. Their hands reached over the table and grabbed a handful of the chocolaty-goodness. I didn't expect them to take all of the M&Ms for goodness sakes! Yet they did, and all I could do was stand by.
That didn't get my hopes down about this group though. We continued discussing a bit while we consumed our treats and they all still seemed very interested in helping the fight for less hunger in the world. It wasn't until they started complaining, "I'm hungry" that I realized maybe this activity wasn't affecting them as much as it should be.
"Is it time to eat yet?"
"No."
"How long until we eat?"
"2 hours."
"2 hours?!"
"Yes."
*moans and groans
"Well, at leas you know when you're getting you're next meal."
Maybe my tone was harsh, but I wanted to get the point across to them that we are very fortunate to be provided for so well in the United States. I could tell that the information still wasn't sticking, but I tried. Sometimes you just have to deal with that. Especially when it comes to less mature minds. You see, many of them may not be in the formal operations developmental stage (we recently learned about stages of development in music therapy). In this stage of development, children begin to look outward instead of inward. They aren't as self-consumed, and they're beginning to observe issues in the world around them and care about them even though the problems may not directly affect them. Usually this stage begins at age 11, but everyone is different. Maybe my group just wasn't quite there yet.
The rest of the activities weren't as big of a deal as far as blogging about it goes. But I do want to talk about dinner time. They were all so excited about eating in the Mensa. I got the impression a lot of them had been here before. They kept saying how great the food is here and how they're going to get, like, 8 plates of food, yeah right. Anyways, I noticed all of the middle schoolers went straight for the pizza and fries. I'm pretty sure every kid there got pizza and fries. This is fine, I just thought it was funny that they all collectively would get the same thing. I don't think I would have gotten pizza and fries when I was in middle school. I don't really remember what I loved to eat then...oh right, chicken noodle casserole was mah fav. Back to the chilluns...after finishing 2-3 plates of pizza and fries plus the occasional fried shrimp or spaghetti, they ALL GOT ICE CREAM. So then the line was super long and everyone was late getting to closing worship.
The point I'm getting at after ranting about the eating habits of these middle schoolers is that they get more food then they need. This is fine, but I hope that they realize that they are over-provided for. They got 3+ plates of food and someone in Ethiopia is getting 0 plates of food. I thought about that while quietly observing their ravenous eating habits, but I don't think they were. I know they need the nutrition to grow up big and strong, but some reflection on what is being given to them would be nice especially since that was the entire point of this day.
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