Preservice Teachers Participate In Famine Project With Brazos Food Bank

4/10/08

Senior-level preservice teachers in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture joined together as part of Together We Learn (TWL) to participate in a community service famine project, "Be Seen. Be Heard. Be Hungry."

Students spent a day volunteering at the Brazos Food Bank while participating in a 30-hour famine project. Prior to this, the students were educated on the facts of world hunger as well as the number of children in the Bryan/College Station community who may not get enough to eat.

"The fact that many of them choose to fast for 30 hours so they could feel the hunger pangs and differences in the way they function without food was amazing," said Karla Eidson, TWL preservice advisor, said. "Reading their reflections on the project was definitely a highlight of the semester for me."

As part of their community service project requirements, the students also purchased an "End Hunger" bag of groceries, which was available at all local grocery stores and goes directly to the Brazos Food Bank. The Brazos Food Bank donates these sacks of groceries to both area school Backpack Programs and the Meals on Wheels program. Volunteers deliver the groceries on Friday so that the elderly and children who may not have food over the weekend don't go hungry.

"What was so neat about doing this was becoming aware of the very real hunger issues in the world, but then bringing it closer to home," Heather Winkle, a senior preservice teacher, said. "It's possible that I donated the food that I sacked for the Backpack Program that could be in the backpack of one of the kids in my placement classroom."

Throughout the day, students filled 900 bags for the backpack and elderly programs.

"Each bag has 18-20 grocery items in it, so that's a lot of food being distributed in our community," Louis Martinez, Brazos Food Bank volunteer coordinator, said. "Because of all the hard work the Aggie preservice teachers did, we were six weeks ahead of schedule with our volunteer calendar. That is just amazing to us."

Click here to view pictures of the event.