Students launch Africa Hunger Alert - International Grassroots Campaign

UN Chronicle, June-August, 2003 by Alan Kirby

Every autumn, my 12th grade German-language students, together with our German club, choose an international crisis and then adopt a plan of action to solve it. This year, we decided that we had to do something about the famine that currently threatens some 40 million Africans, many of them children, with death by starvation.

Coupled with the AIDS pandemic in Africa, we believe famine is the most severe problem facing the world today. Shockingly, at least here in the United States, it gets little or no press coverage on the evening news or in the newspapers. We learned that in order to prevent millions of deaths, more money was needed; therefore, our mission was simple--to raise awareness of the problem and raise money.

We were often asked how the German-language students came to be involved in this project. First, students of a foreign language gain an appreciation of foreign cultures and start to see themselves as global citizens who do not see a crisis outside of their borders as "not our problem'. One of the many ways we promote global citizenship is by hosting German exchange students every spring and travelling to our sister high school in Germany every summer. Most of my students have been both hosts to exchange students in their homes and guests in Germany as well. Secondly, as students, it is our duty to act when people are suffering. We do an extensive unit on the holocaust, and many of my students are motivated afterwards to help others in need, to speak out and take action. One of the lessons of the holocaust is that good people cannot just stand by and let terrible things happen to other people, and we are using these lessons from German history to make a more positive world today.

We chose to work on the African problem, because the problems in that continent tend to be ignored. As American Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia stated: "Does anyone really believe that the world would turn a blind eye if this crisis were unfolding in France or Australia?"

We began our project in September 2002 by collecting change in our lunchroom and aluminum cans to recycle. After researching various aid agencies, we decided to send all the proceeds to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

In November 2002, when the situation began to deteriorate, especially in Ethiopia, we decided to hold a candlelight vigil to raise awareness and money. We e-mailed people in WFP advising them of our plans and asking for assistance with the project. A few days later, Trevor Rowe, WFP chief spokesman, called and told us that WFP wanted to help, and also informed us that our project and the work of other private individuals and school communities inspired the Africa Hunger Alert, the launch of which coincided with our vigil on 16 December 2002. Africa Hunger Alert is a grassroots effort to connect and inspire various groups and individuals who are working to combat famine and raise the awareness of the situation. Our small project had become an international campaign to help millions of victims of the vast hunger crisis in Africa.

With the help of WFP, we were interviewed by Reuters and the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and had the good luck of publicizing our story in the local newspaper, The Arnold/Imperial Leader, and the Jefferson County section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Our local NPR affiliate also ran a short segment about our vigil on the local morning news. However, we were not as fortunate in getting local television news programmes interested in our story. This is a difficult time to bring attention to a famine--it is difficult to compete with Iraq and North Korea for news time--and we were disappointed because we knew that raising awareness equalled saving lives.

Our vigil went well, although turnout was light, but it was a special evening nonetheless. One of my students wrote the lyrics, composed the music and sang an original song about the famine. We also had a short film from WFP on display. Our keynote speakers included Father Tom Wyrsch, a Catholic priest who works with immigrants in St. Louis (the event was non-religious), and Lynn Hamilton, a staff aide for Congressman and Presidential-hopeful Richard Gephardt. The generosity of those who attended was humbling; for example, our school custodian listened in on our vigil and donated $100. Many believe that we suffer from "donor fatigue", but how would we know that, considering few people in the United States even know about the famine or that 40 million people could lose their lives.

Raising awareness about the famine is a challenge. One of our ideas is to put a human face on the tragedy.

Fayo Hadji Edao is an eight-year-old boy who lives in Dir Fakar, Ethiopia and is certain that he and his siblings will die during this famine. He enjoys school, which is 12 kilometres away from his home, but now he cannot attend it. His mother spends four hours each day fetching water from the nearest source for him and his four siblings. lust as Anne Frank has become the symbol of the Holocaust, we believe that Fayo could become the poster child for the famine in Africa. We saw a report about him on the BBC and he is what inspired our work and became the spirit of our candlelight vigil. The sheer numbers of those dying is a statistic and we need a human face on this tragedy to motivate the world to act. We can only hope that Fayo is still alive.