So, we were trying to come up with a good way to raise awareness and money to fight world hunger. We thought of some pretty interesting ways to do that, like painting an old beater with the words "hunger" and "poverty" and charging $5 per swing of the sledge hammer to destroy the problems. We thought about doing the old standard and having each person find sponsors for the 30 Hour Famine. But the one that stuck, for some crazy reason, was the making of a paper chain.Yep. A paper chain. You remember those, right? Like the ones we used to make in elementary school when we were counting down the end of the school year, or the days until Christmas, or a way to decorate a Christmas tree for next to nothing.
But this paper chain is different. It might help to feed the world.
See, what we decided to do--and when I say "we," I mean our very tiny youth group composed of four members, a couple of guests, and Bo and I as sponsors--was to create a paper chain with each link representing one child who dies of hunger and hunger-related issues every day. The finished chain would then be displayed around the church, and the links would be sold for .25 each with all the money going directly to WorldVision to help eliminate hunger in the world.
Do you have any idea how many links that would be? Do you know how many children die *every day* of hunger-related issues?
Can you imagine making a paper chain with 29,000 links?
Not 2,900. Twenty. Nine. Thousand.
Since January, we have been plugging away on these paper chains. People from the community as well as from our small church have been working together to put together the huge chain which we will reveal on March 20th as part of our youth service. Yesterday, we met with residents of a local retirement community and completed the last 1,700 links.
Our project has just begun, because now we have to sell the chains. Some say we should sell them for 25 cents, and others, who are more realistic, are suggesting 10 cents each.
I thought that this was a unique idea, making a 29,000 link paper chain to raise awareness of world hunger, but it's not. I found that there are other groups doing this and other paper chain fundraisers here and here and here.
It's also pretty cool that we've had local newspapers do feature pieces on the project, and that several members of our church have pitched in to help, which has given us a chance to get to know them.
It seems like a silly thing, this huge chain of brightly colored recycled paper, but it has really helped us to think about world hunger, to help others realize what a big deal it is, and to build some relationships along the way.
