Published: February 10, 2008 01:28 pm      

TONAWANDAS: Students starve for a taste of poverty

Local middle and high school students participate in a 30-hour fast to raise money for developing nations

TOWN OF TONAWANDA — Emily DeSoto, an 11th-grader at North Tonawanda High School, hadn’t eaten in about 26 hours. To make matters worse, she was just informed she couldn’t move her left leg due to polio.

Luckily for her, it was just an exercise.

Nearly 75 students from the Tonawandas and surrounding communities participated this weekend in a 30-hour famine to experience the hardship of living in a developing country.

The short span of food abstinence was just a small taste of the struggles for those starving, though.

“Thirty hours is trivial compared to what these people go through. They don’t eat for days,” said DeSoto, who has participated in the famine for three years. “Our stomachs are just growling. That’s all we have to worry about. Plus, we still have water and stuff — they don’t even have that.”

The group of teens stopped eating Friday and stayed overnight at First Trinity Lutheran Church in the Town of Tonawanda, where they played “tribe games,” competitions simulating the problems plaguing impoverished nations.

In one game, teams of students raced to wash their feet with jugs of water. But after the game ended is when the message became clear.

Evan Gaertner, pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Niagara Falls, asked the students how it would feel to have to drink the water they just bathed in.

“They get that sense of what it means to say that 50 percent of the world does not have access to clean drinking water,” he said.

Students were sponsored during the 30-hour lock-in and the money raised will go to World Vision, an organization that works to improve the lives of those in developing countries.

Each participant was aiming to earn at least $30, which is enough to feed a child in a developing nation for a month, Gaertner said.

The fasting time was also spent volunteering at local not-for-profit organizations.

Though she could see how hard life is for people who rely on places like Cornerstone Manor, a women and children’s shelter in Buffalo, DeSoto said visiting to help out was an uplifting experience.

“You get that helper’s high,” she said. “You feel like you’re doing good for people and it’s exhilarating. I feel like I grow stronger in Christ every time.”

And that’s the empowering thing about making such a small sacrifice in the name of helping others, said Jason Christ, director of student ministries at First Trinity.

“I think students have a desire to accomplish something bigger than themselves to help others,” he said. “This is an opportunity to feel what others might be feeling in a very limited while helping to raise money to fight starvation in the world.”

Some adults may look at teenagers as having bad attitudes, but Tyler Helton, a 10th-grader at Lockport High School, said the participants in the 30-hour famine prove it’s not true.

“I think the more teenagers do things like this, the more we get rid of that bad rap,” he said.

Contact reporter Caitlin Murray

at 282-2311, ext. 2251