Food - Youth Workin' It

10 Would You Rather Food Questions

June 19, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

Food Would You Rather Questions — Which of these would you rather eat a teaspoon of?

Each week, we’re publishing lists of questions you can use when playing Would You Rather. See this post that explains how to play the game.

This week, we have 10 questions relating to food. These ideas aren’t particularly gross – we’ll be publishing some of those in the future!

10 Would You Rather Food Questions

Would you rather…

have to kill an animal any time you want to eat meat or never eat meat again?
only eat fruit or vegetables for one year?
eat for free for the rest of your life but have it be food you don’t like, or only eat food you love but have to pay five times the normal amount for it?
only be allowed to eat your meals with chopsticks or with your fingers?
eat at McDonalds or KFC?
eat a banana peel or an orange peel?
eat a teaspoon of black pepper or a teaspoon of salt?
never eat pizza or burgers again?
only eat ice cream or pizza for the rest of your life?
only eat food that’s so spicy it burns your mouth or food that’s so bland it has no flavor?

Discussions / Activities

Get the book – 501 Would You Rather Questions

These food questions could be used to help lead into any kind of youth group activities that involve food. Here are some example:

Helping teens plan meals – part 1
Helping teens plan meals – part 2
Teaching teenagers the life skill of food shopping
Teaching youth table etiquette
Exploring the issue of hunger – part 1
Exploring the issue of hunger – part 2
Learning about food from different countries

If you liked these ideas, we have loads more Would You Rather questions you can use.

Question: What other food-themed questions can you think of? Let us know in the comments below.

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Live Below The Line – Youth Group Activities

April 25, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

Live Below The Line is a global campaign that seeks to both raise awareness about extreme poverty and raise money in order to make a difference for people living in that situation.

This week’s session plan idea therefore has some ideas for youth group activities to take part in this campaign.

What’s involved?

Extreme poverty is currently defined as having to live on $1.50 a day. The Live Below The Line campaign therefore encourages people to spend five days living on $1.50 a day, so a total of $7.50 over the course of the five days.

Although this would normally include all costs like housing, clothing, transport, etc, for the purpose of the campaign participants only have to restrict their $1.50 spending to food and drink.

The US part of the campaign is being run from April 29 to May 3 2013, but if this doesn’t provide enough time to prepare the following activities, your youth group could always participate during another 5 day period.

So here are some suggested youth group activities to help your young people have a more tangible appreciation for what life is like when living on such a small amount of money.

Activity 1 – Video

Watch a video which explains a little more about Live Below The Line. We’ve embedded one below featuring Hugh Jackman, but there are many more featuring Sophia Bush, Josh Groban and others.

n.b. This video is aimed at Australians, so gives the figure as $2 which is the Australian Dollar equivalent.

Activity 2 – Meal Planning

Sit down with your youth and plan out some meals that they might be able to afford on a $1.50 a day budget

To prepare for this, go to a grocery store and price out various staple foods and ingredients. Make a note of the:

Price per package
Weight of package
Portion size

This will enable you to calculate the cost per portion in advance. Create a worksheet with all the portion size prices so that the young people can pick and choose the different ingredients they need for each meal.

Here are some suggestions for food items to include:

Pasta
Rice
Baked potatoes
Bananas
Breakfast cereal
Milk
Eggs
Cheap cuts of meat
Canned tuna
Lentils
Vegetables
Ramen noodles
Canned tomatoes
Bread
Butter

Stipulate that they have to plan for three meals a day. Each meal doesn’t have to total $0.50, but they’re not allowed to exceed $1.50 per day.

See our previous session plan about meal planning for some further ideas on how to help young people learn how to do this.

Activity 3 – Cooking

Even if your youth group can’t fully participate in the entire campaign, cook and eat a meal together. For this part, allow $0.50 per person for ingredients.

This might cause some conflicts between youth who want to eat different things or who don’t like the meal that’s been chosen. Use this as an opportunity to discuss what it must be like for families who have to live on such a strict budget for their entire lives. Encourage them to try to find a meal that everyone’s able to agree upon.

Activity 4 – Fundraiser

Plan a youth group fundraiser as an activity to raise money for people who have to live on such a low budget every day of the year. The Live Below The Line website has a list of partner organizations who the money can be donated to.

A good option could be a spaghetti dinner fundraiser, restricting the portion size spending to $1.50 per person. You can then highlight to the attendees that the meal they just ate would be all that 1.4 billion people worldwide would be able to afford for that day’s food.

Try to charge as much as possible for the meal so that you can maximize the amount raised. If 50 people paid $10 per head, this would raise $425 after the food costs have been taken out. Arrange a collection for the attendees to donate further to the cause.

Activity 5 – Youth Retreat

If you’re planning a youth retreat, consider using a hunger theme, limiting the food spending to $1.50 per person per day. This will give the youth a much better idea of what it’s really like to live on such a low food budget and how bland and lacking in nutrition meals will tend to be.

This will also help reduce the cost of the youth retreat as you’ll need less money for the food budget. Charge the same amount for the retreat as you normally would though, using the additional money to either subsidize the cost for less well-off youth, or donate the rest to a charity that works with people living in extreme poverty.

Questions: Are you taking part in the Live Below The Line campaign? What kind of youth group activities are you planning? Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Make An Easter Pinata Cake

March 29, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

If you want to make some fun Easter food for your youth group, here’s a great idea that Shae’s done for all three of her Girl Scout troops this last week – make an Easter pinata cake.

It’s really simple to make and will blow the mind of your young people when they cut into it to find loads of candy.

Here’s how to make an Easter pinata cake:

Ingredients

2 x cake mix (plus any additional ingredients required for that, such as eggs, oil, etc)
2 x tubs of cake frosting
Food coloring
Candy (jelly beans, M&Ms, small chocolate eggs and Tootsie Rolls work well for this)

Recipe

1. Make two separate cakes using the two mixes. Bake these in glass bowls so that the bases of them are rounded – the bowls also need to be the same size. Lightly grease the inside of the bowls and then sprinkle flour all around the inside before adding the cake mix – this will make it easier to remove them.

2. Once baked, remove them from the bowls and allow them to cool – they should look like this:

3. Once cooled, hollow out the inside of both cakes, leaving approximately one inch around the sides and at the base:

4. Put one tub of frosting in a bowl, add some food coloring and mix together. Put the other tub of frosting in a bowl, add a different color and mix together. Alternatively, just buy pre-colored frosting!

5. Cover one of the cake bases with one color of frosting, then go over with the other color:

6. Fill the cake with candy so that it’s heaped at the top:

7. Add the other hollowed out cake to the top:

8. Cover this other cake with both colors of frosting and voila – an Easter pinata cake:

As you can see from the picture above, Shae also added glittery sprinkles as it was for girls – if you have boys in your group, they probably won’t have quite the same appreciation for sparkly stuff.

When you’re ready to cut open the Easter pinata cake, make sure all your youth can see it – they’ll love seeing the candy fall out:

Happy Easter!

5 Great St Patrick’s Day Activities

February 18, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

St Patrick's Day activities If you’re looking for some St Patrick’s Day activities, check out these 5 ideas that are great for doing with kids and teenagers:

Activity 1 – Green Things

This youth group game can be done by splitting the group into smaller teams. Give each team a pen and paper and have them list as many different green items that they can think of.

This could include obvious things (like frogs, bottles, etc) to more vague things (bags, paper, etc). You might want to have some catch-all categories for things like vegetables and fruit, rather than them listing 50 different fruits and vegetables – that doesn’t have to be the case though.

Before the game, make a separate list of 10 green items of your own. Award one point for every green item that each team has listed, with them earning 3 bonus points for each item that is the same as one on your own list.

To save you time, here are suggestions for what items you could use for your own list:

Boogers
Bottles
Dishwashing Liquid
Eyes
Frog
Guacamole
Incredible Hulk
Nail Polish
Paint
Statue Of Liberty

Activity 2 – Green Food

The second of our St Patrick’s Day activities is to have the youth make all kinds of different green food. This could include ingredients that are naturally green like fruit, vegetables, pistachio nuts, Jell-o, etc, but you can easily jazz up other ingredients for St Patrick’s Day.

Just get some green food coloring and add it to milk, rice, mashed potatoes, eggs (for green eggs and ham!) and more.

Activity 3 – Pot Of Gold

For this youth group game, you’ll need some pots (or buckets), masking tape and gold coins or chocolate coins.

Put a line of masking tape on the ground. Split the youth group into teams and have them stand in lines behind the tape. About 10-15 feet away, put a pot in front of each team and then give each team the same number of coins.

Team members should take it in turns to try and throw the coins into the pot/bucket. The team that manages to land the most of their coins in their pot wins. If using chocolate coins for the game, you could give those as a prize.

Activity 4 – Scavenger Hunt

Organize a St Patrick’s Day scavenger hunt for your group where they have a list of items that they have to collect – what gives it a St Patrick’s Day theme is that all the items they find have to be green.

You can find a more detailed explanation of how to organize this scavenger hunt here, where you can also download a free printable list.

Activity 5 – Go Green

Our final suggestion is to get your young people to go green by doing some kind of environmentally friendly activities. Plant some trees, do a litter-picking fundraiser, have a recycling drive, etc.

Question: What kind of St Patrick’s Day activities are you doing with your youth group? Let us know in the comments below.

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Enough Food For Everyone IF – Youth Work Session Idea

January 24, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

Hunger Youth Work Session Idea (Edit: Since this post was published, it looks like the Enough Food For Everyone IF website has been taken down. We’ve therefore removed any dead links – apologies that this reduced the usefulness of this session idea)

Almost one billion people worldwide suffer from hunger, so there’s a new campaign that’s started in the UK called Enough Food For Everyone IF.

Purpose

The purpose of this campaign is to put pressure on the leaders of the G8 countries to commit to fixing four areas that impact hunger. The G8 is made up of countries with some of the largest economies in the world:

Canada
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Russia
UK
USA

The European Union is also represented at the G8, so a commitment by all these nations could achieve a big difference.

The four areas that Enough Food For Everyone IF are seeking change in are:

Aid – Give aid to stop children dying from hunger. Help the poorest have enough food to live.
Land – Stop poor farmers being forced off their land. Grow crops to provide food, not fuel.
Tax – Stop companies dodging taxes in poor countries so millions can be freed from hunger.
Transparency – Governments and companies must be honest about their role in the food system.

Video

Enough Food For Everyone IF have produced the short video below explaining about the campaign.

Who Is Involved?

Many large charities like World Vision are supporting this initiative, with many different faith groups and non-faith groups also being involved.

This is therefore a great example of organizations putting aside differences to work for the common good.

Free Session Resources

There are many different resources available on the Enough Food For Everyone website that you can use as youth group activities to address the issue of hunger:

~~Case Studies~~ – This PDF has numerous case studies about people suffering from hunger in different countries around the world. This resource suggests splitting up into smaller groups to have the young people look at just one case study, but if you only have a small group in the first place you could just as easily look at all the case studies together.
~~Plate Activity~~ – If you’re in the UK, this activity involves having your youth decorate a plate with their own thoughts, ideas and solutions to global hunger. You then send the plates to one of three UK based organizations, who will then send them on to the Prime Minister.
~~Learning Resources~~ – This page contains links to 30 different free resources from charities like Oxfam and Action Aid that address the issues of Aid, Land, Tax and Transparency that this campaign is focused on.

What Are Key Stages?

There are references to Key Stage levels 2-4 on their website, particularly on the Learning Resources page. This refers to the age-appropriateness of the activities for students. Here are the ages that the Key Stages relate to:

Key Stage 2 – 7-11 year olds
Key Stage 3 – 11-14 year olds
Key Stage 4 – 14-16 years old

Therefore, if you’re working with teens, the Key Stage 2 activities will probably be too “childish” for your youth, so pick the Key Stage 3 or 4 activities instead.

Other Hunger-Related Resources

We’ve previously published a free youth retreat theme based on hunger, so that has many other youth group activities that you can use to explore this global issue.

In the comments on that post, TJ’s also referred to another organization called Kids Can Make A Difference that seeks to enable youth to make a difference about hunger.

Question: What other hunger-related resources have you used or know about? We’d love to find out about them, so let us know in the comments below.

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