NSAC students participate in 30 hour famine

NSAC residence students will be spending the weekend without food in an effort to raise awareness on poverty and hunger.

Residence Assistants Matthew Bryson, Samuel Cripps and Katherine Banks along with 15 other students will eat their last meal at noon on Friday and go without for the next 30 hours on World Vision’s program 30 hour Famine.

“The 30 Hour Famine is a great program which improves students’ education on events happening in our world and gives them an understanding of how people in Africa and Southern Asia live every day,” explained second year Pre-Vet student Katherine Banks.

Every day, nearly 8,000 children under age 5 die of hunger-related causes and more than 24,000 children lose their lives each day, most of them to poverty, disease and hunger. Almost all of these deaths are preventable.

“The program is designed to create an atmosphere to help people that have lots of food every day, to be able to see what it feels like to not have food,” added Matthew Bryson. “At the same time money is raised to send to World Vision to provide food, water and health care to several different developing countries.”

In addition to raising individual pledges, the students’ efforts will be bolstered by NSAC’s on campus food service provider, Chartwells, who will donate the cost of meals the students will not be eating over the 30 hours toward the cause.

“Chartwells is very pleased to support NSAC students in this very worthy cause,” said Chartwells Food Service Director Julie Andrews. “It’s great to see the NSAC community participating in such events and hopefully the number of participants will continue to grow each year."

Chartwells will also sponsor a reception at the end of the 30 Hour Famine which will be the students’ first meal in 30 hours.

During the program, participating students will be staying in Chapman house basement and participating in various programming related to food and health.

“It’s a great event to be participating in, as hunger issues will always be part of our world and are usually forgotten by those who don't have to think about it. “By raising awareness we can open people's eyes to the situation,” added third year Animal Science student Sam Cripps.

'Increasing awareness of the growing food problem worldwide is a large effort requiring all of us involved in agriculture, food, international development and beyond,” said Dr. Leslie MacLaren, NSAC Co-President and Vice President Academic, "We're proud to see these NSAC students making a difference on this front.”

NSAC is a specialized university that cultivates learning and research, focusing on improving and sustaining our environment for the health and well-being of society.