Saturday, May 30, 2009

Won't somebody please think of the children?




Put an ad on the radio and people will respond!

We've got a spot running on WUTC mentioning our availability to come speak in local schools. Well we've gotten tons of calls to line things up, which is exciting. Last Tuesday we went down to Dalton to talk to some 4th graders at Brookwood Elementary. They were great, well-behaved, interested kids who had fun with our activities and products.

Something that struck us about the 4th graders is that they respond to things the way we ought to naturally. Here's what I mean by that. We like to do an activity with kids to help put global poverty in perspective. We divide up the room into groups to represent wealthy nations, middle nations, and poor nations. This class had 24 kids. We had 3 kids represent wealthy nations, 7 represent middle nations, and 15 represent poor nations. This reflects the proportions of the human population living in those nations. We then hand them baggies of Cheerios to illustrate the distribution of food in those nations. The 3 "wealthy" kids each get a bag full of 50 Cheerios. The 7 "middle" kids each get a bag of 7 Cheerios. The 15 "poor" kids must share a bag of 5 Cheerios.

While the older groups we speak to, especially adults, simply nod their heads as they grasp the idea, the 4th graders exclaim, "What?! This is so unfair! You mean this actually happens in the world? We need to do something about this!" As we grow older we become desensitized to big injustices like global poverty. These kids are still young enough to have a very visceral response to the revelation that most of the world doesn't have enough food to eat. That's inspiring to us as we continue in our work trying to play our small but significant role in fighting global poverty.

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