On March 13 I ran a social action program which focused on hunger awareness. I volunteered to lead the program at Congregation Beth Shalom with Anne we organized it jointly with three other organizations from around the Chicagoland area. The 4 hour program itself was very interesting. We began dividing the group of participants into 3 social classes; wealthy, middle class, and poor. Each class was then served ice cream. The wealthy were served promptly with their choice of toppings. The middle class was given a reasonable bowl of ice cream, and the poor received a thimble of ice cream. As you may have guessed, there were a lot more poor people than middle class, and even less wealthy. We were careful to highlight the significance of how much income affects someone's ability to obtain something as basic as food, something that many of us living relatively comfortably can take for granted.
After the interactive part of our program, we invited a speaker to come and tell us her story. She was a woman that my youth group had been working with who had lost her job, her home, and was a single mother putting her kids through school. We all listened as she told us of how suddenly she found herself out of work and struggling to get food for her family. Luckily, after a difficult struggle she went to school to learn to be a chef and is currently employed.
Finally, we concluded the program with having every participant make a few sandwiches which we then donated to P.A.D.S. It was a very successful day and we helped a lot of people become aware of a very serious problem and we provided food for some people in need of help.
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