Our Daily Bread

Before our Environmental Issues class, we started to discuss world hunger and how that the numbers have increased drastically within five years. But I could not grasp the concept in why this was happening to the community. A lot of people and families were on the street and in third world countries it was just a regular thing that some families were living on the streets. Some of the reading that we read in class about world hunger for example, “12 myths about hunger,” and “Stolen Harvest,” by Shiva; I saw that third world countries were suffering dramatically compared to the United States. When I went to Lebanon last summer, I saw so many families that were on the street and were doing anything to get by just for that day; if it wasn’t from selling products like gum, it was begging, or even stealing from open markets in the street so they can just feed their children at night. You also have children scavenging for food or finding some type of money just so they can take it home to their parents so they won’t be beaten at night for night bringing anything. It was sad to see it and it hurt have to see children at that age go through that. So in a sense for me to get a better grasp on this concept and to answer all my questions I decided to go volunteer at a soup kitchen in Denton, TX called Our Daily Bread that is located in St. Andrews Protestant Church. It began at 9:30 in the morning and there we started to prepare for lunch that was served at noon. Liz was the head chef of Our Daily Bread, she gave everyone different task that needed to be completed so everything can be ready to go at noon to serve to the community. There is met a couple of people that have been in this program for about fifteen years and are members of the church as well. They say they enjoy giving back to the society and helping people in need because seeing people smile and grateful that someone is out there helping them out. Shiva explained in his story that most gave up their lands or harvest because of the debt the family was in, and that what could help them. “The starving Bengal peasants gave up over two thirds of the food produced, leading their debt to double.” They had no other choice but give up crops, which this leads them to have nothing let at the end. Which kids and families are left starving because no food was left? In the story, 12 myths about hunger that “food is always available to those who can afford it- starvation during hard times hits only the poorest.” And one way they worded it in the story is that, “trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid.” I didn’t realize how many people there were living on the streets or in shelters because of debt or financial issues they were dealing with. I talked to some people, to find out what happen to them and a lot of them were there because they lost their jobs and one issue to another started to arise and in a sense they lost everything. It was hard for some of them to talk about these issues and others just needed someone to talk to because in a sense they saw someone wanting to hear and listen to them. In the 12 myth it states that, “we have had a net loss of over a million jobs here in the U.S. while in Mexico has lost 1.3 million in the agricultural sector alone and hunger is on the rise in both countries.” Hunger from one third to two thirds of the population because people have been too poor to buy the food grown on their own country’s soil. One thing that people don’t realize as in a society we only can help so much, which in a sense we don’t see the bigger picture like on lady named Jackie said while we were preparing food. The United States, the world is growing were ever you are, generation is growing. Kids and being born, homes are being built and in a sense that means we are going to have to feed more mouths. Shiva quotes, “worrying about starving future generations won’t feed them. Food biotechnology will. The world’s population is growing rapidly, adding the equivalent of a China to the globe every ten years. To feed these billion more mouths, we can try to extending our farming land or squeezing greater harvests out of existing civilization.” It just made me start thinking what will happen, with just the food we prepared at the soup kitchen and food and supplies that all these different places donated, it can only last for so long because it will come to a point it won’t be enough for the society. Honestly I can say I really enjoyed volunteering and helping out people that truly needed it. It is something that I would love to do in the future, just by helping out and showing that I care and grateful for what I had and just to make a difference in someone else life.