“The first freedom of man, I contend, is the freedom to eat,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
Every day, about 24,000 people around the world die from hunger and related causes, according to a Stanford University report on worldwide hunger. On Friday, University students and members of the community will have an opportunity to gain first-hand experience with hunger and how it affects the body and mind.
The St. Thomas More Newman Center is sponsoring a 24-hour fast in an effort to raise awareness about worldwide hunger. The fast starts at noon on Friday, and participants should plan on meeting at 5 p.m. in the St. Dominic room of the center, located at 1850 Emerald St.
Justin Zuiker, one of the event’s student coordinators, said the fast will use the honor system.
“Because of work and school schedules, we will not be meeting as a group until 5:00 p.m.,” he said. “But all participants must not eat from noon Friday to noon Saturday.”
In order to encourage a feeling of solidarity and unity, participants in the fast are encouraged to bring a sleeping bag and stay the night at the center, Zuiker said.
Saturday morning the group will travel to the FOOD for Lane County community garden. There, they will help till the soil and, in doing so, gain an understanding of worldwide hunger, said Father David Orique, associate campus minister at the Newman Center.
“The fast has four main components,” Orique explained. “There is the physical aspect of denying food to the body, an educational aspect will occur in the evening during a series of readings and activities, a spiritual aspect in the form of prayer and thought and the last will occur when participants take action against hunger by working at the garden.”
Orique said one of the goals of the fast involves participants taking their thoughts off their own hunger and instead focusing on world hunger and its ramifications.
“As members of the Catholic faith we try to look at the idea of social justice,” he said. “We try to answer the question, ‘Why are people hungry?’”
Sister Dodi, a long-time volunteer at the Newman Center, said that hunger is often looked at as a plague of the lazy, and she is adamant that this is incorrect.
“Hunger persists because hungry people lack the opportunity they need to bring their own hunger to an end,” she said. “Hungry people are not the problem — they’re the solution. The world does not have a billion starving mouths to feed. It has one billion hard working courageous human beings whose creativity and productivity must be unleashed.”
For more information about the 24-hour fast contact the Newman Center at 343-7021.