Feast and Famine

This week at Lehigh University, where I work, is Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.  On Thursday many of us in the community will be wearing t-shirts to represent our support in fighting this sad reality within our communities, country, and world.  I wanted to share the story printed on the backs of our t-shirts:

Feast and Famine

A child spoke with a teacher about feast and famine.  The teacher said to the child, “Come, I will show you famine.”

They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of stew.  Everyone was famished, desperate, and starving.  Each held a spoon that reached the pot, but each spoon had a handle so much longer than their own arms that it could not be used to get the stew into their own mouths.

The suffering was terrible.

“Come, now I will show you a feast,” the teacher said after a while.

They entered another room, identical to the first: the pot of stew, the group of people, the same long-handled spoons.  But there everyone was happy and well-nourished.

“I don’t understand,” said the child.  “Why are they happy when they were miserable in the other room and everyone was the same?”

The teacher smiled, “Ah, it is simple.  Here they have learned to feed each other.”

Here are a few facts that were shared during last year’s Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week:

100,000,000,000
pounds of edible food are thrown away in the US per year

3,500,000
US residents experience homelessness in a given year

800,000
Americans are homeless in any given night

21,000
Dollars per year is the poverty line for a family of four

6,300
People worldwide die each day from hunger-related causes

950
Children a year are housed in a shelter in the Lehigh Valley (Pennsylvania)

97
Hours a week must be worked at minimum wage to afford rent

3
Dollars a day are given to people relying on food stamps