GOOD MORNING feelgood boys and girls,
Hope you all had a fantastic weekend and a lovely superbowl Sunday!(asa born and raised "chicago-an," I am now in recovery)
Football aside, this week is an "official feelgood meeting week." At the last "official meeting" we all came up with a few goals to liveup to this semester:
1) educate others about The Hunger Project
2) Plan a possible event with Middlebury Feelgood
3)Reach out to more faculty
4)Find more donations in order to limit budget money spent on produce
5) Raise $15,000 this semester!!!!!
So this week's meeting is TODAY (MONDAY), FEBRUARY 5TH @ 7:00 PM IN THE MLK LOUNGE (NEAR CC THEATER) Also, the new apparel is at the counter! We've got some sweet AmericanApparel blue and grey t-shirts as well as cranberry and asphalt trackjackets. Come check it out and hear about our great deal!
As usual we will be doing prep after the meeting as well as sign-upsfor the week. Shoot me an email if you'd like to sign up for a slot but can't make it to the meeting. This week we are trying time-slotsaccording to "class periods" If it doesn't really fly we will go back to the hour slots. You can still sign up for as many slots as you would like, this is an experiment to see if we can transition the counterpositions more smoothly.
ALSO...Feelgood will be at the 1st annual Winter Club Fair this weekon Wednesday the 7th from 11-3. Sign-ups to work our table will be atthe meeting.
Now to educate ourselves....So I found this website called
thehungersite.com. I clicked thisbutton that said
"help feed the hungry...click here, its free" I clicked and a message came up that said
"Thank you! Your click helps feed the hungry with the value of 1.1cups of staple food. Please click every day and thank our sponsorsbelow." Hmmmm....I hope you can all see what is very wrong with this idea. Read this exerpt from The Hunger Project's February newsletter and see if you can find the flaws with the kind of "hunger" image above....
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fishand he will eat for a lifetime."~ Chinese Proverb.
This proverb leaps to mind whenever we think of efforts to end hunger. Yet, it is surprisingly and dangerously misleading. Most of the hungriest parts of the world produce more than enoughfood. India - the country with the largest number of hungry people - has tens of millions of tons of surplus food in storage. If hungry people don't lack our food, then surely they lack our knowledge. Don't they need our technology and expertise to solve their problems of hunger and poverty?
No. People are not hungry because they are ignorant. Some of theworld's greatest knowledge of sustainable fishing, herding and farmingresides in the world's hungry villages. We in the West could franklyuse a few lessons ourselves in sustainable food production. The issues are more fundamental. The fish are there. The people knowhow to fish. Yet, there is barbed wire around the pond - literally andfiguratively."
As members of FeelGood, these are the ideas we need to help our peersto adopt. Our partners around the world may be denied thier voice, but we have the opportunity to use ours to its full potential. If you would like an example of how The Hunger Project addresses the underlying social conditions in order to cut that "barbed wire," read on...
"Increasing people's productivity and income requires accurate information. The majority of hungry people live in rural communities that are at a serious economic disadvantage because they are without news of markets, prices, climatic conditions and competition. The Hunger Project develops strategies to overcome this isolation by ensuring that people in remote areas have timely access to informationto make knowledgeable decisions and improve their livelihoods. In Bolivia, our partner organization's radio broadcast provides information in Quechua, the local, indigenous language. EverySaturday, the radio station announces prices of agricultural products so that farmers have the timely information they need to protect themselves against abuses by purchasers who buy products at lower than fair prices in communities far from the capital. The station denounces unfair activity and encourages farmers to organize into federations.
Another example is from India, where the government has employment and drought relief schemes to provide income for the poor. People who are the poorest of the poor often are not covered by the schemes and also do not know that these programs exist. Elected local women leaders trained by The Hunger Project ensure that in their area every family living in poverty is covered by the schemes and is able to take advantage of them."
Congratualtions if you've made it to this blog. An even bigger congratulations if you've learned something!
See you tomorrow,
-Leah - VP of UVM FeelGood
