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Live Below The Line – Youth Group Activities

April 25, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

Live Below The Line Youth Group Activities
Breakfast on a $1.50 daily budget

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.

You can also connect with us by:

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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:

  1. Aid – Give aid to stop children dying from hunger. Help the poorest have enough food to live.
  2. Land – Stop poor farmers being forced off their land. Grow crops to provide food, not fuel.
  3. Tax – Stop companies dodging taxes in poor countries so millions can be freed from hunger.
  4. 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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Youth Retreat Themes – Hunger

March 26, 2012 By Stephen Pepper 2 Comments

Youth Retreat Themes - HungerComing up with youth retreat themes can be one of the hardest parts of planning a youth retreat. Over the coming months, we’ll be giving some youth retreat theme ideas for you to use.

On Thursdays, we give free youth work session plan ideas. As the name suggests though, these ideas are based on shorter youth work sessions, so aren’t always suitable as themes for youth retreats that take place over a weekend or longer.

These youth retreat themes will therefore give you a broad outline for your retreat, enabling you to expand on the material to tailor it for your own youth group.

 

Youth Retreat Themes – Hunger

Following the recent release of The Hunger Games, this felt like an apt choice as a youth retreat theme. Although not based on the book, this theme will help young people explore the issue of hunger facing many other youth around the world.

This youth retreat theme has been created using a number of materials from The Turning Point Trust, a charity working with children and families in the Kibera slums in Kenya. The Turning Point Trust was set up by Jon & Jo Parsons – Jon was one of my youth workers when I was a teen and he and Jo are doing incredible work in Kibera.

Meals

This will be one of the biggest challenges, as this youth retreat theme involves taking up the Kibera Diet Challenge. This restricts the types of food, methods of cooking, etc – check out the rules of the challenge here.

As youth retreats tend to be held further away, you might need to forgo the 4th rule as you’ll need to buy the food in advance. However, see the activities below for an idea on how you can still make the young people work for their food.

There is also a Kibera Diet Challenge recipe book to give you some ideas of meals that can be made, along with the ingredients needed.

Meetings/Discussions

Turning Point have also provided a free reflections worksheet for those taking the Kibera Diet Challenge. This provides some good discussion points to have with your youth to help them consider further the issues facing those dealing with hunger on a daily basis.

The reflections worksheet includes some suggested reading from the Bible, but if you’re not running a Christian youth retreat then this section can be left if you wish.

The worksheet is also based on people taking the challenge over the course of five days. As most youth retreats occur over the course of a weekend, these reflections could be condensed accordingly – perhaps day 1 on Friday, days 2 & 3 on Saturday and days 4 & 5 on Sunday.

Activities

As mentioned in the meals section above, walking to a store might not be a viable option on your youth retreat, especially because most youth retreat centers tend to be in the middle of nowhere. Here are some activities though to help your youth experience this part of the challenge.

  1. Organize a quite literal scavenger hunt – Hide each day’s food all over the youth retreat center complex or preferably over an even wider area, if there are woods or hiking trails nearby. Provide a map or instructions for the youth on where to find the food.
  2. Fetching water – Do some research into churches, businesses or community organizations within a 2-5 mile radius of the youth retreat center. Contact them in advance to ask if they’d be willing to have you all walk there and fill up large water containers, acting as a faux-well. Your youth can then work as a team to help each other carry the heavy water containers back to the retreat center.
  3. Fire making – As electric appliances can’t be used, consider cooking meals over a fire or by using some basic outdoor camping cookers. If building a fire, gathering firewood can be used as an activity each day and would be a great opportunity for relationship building. Be sure to conduct risk assessments due to the safety aspect of this though (see our book for more details on how to conduct a risk assessment for youth retreats).
 After the youth retreat

Having experienced a little of what it would be like to eat meals similar to someone in a Kenyan slum, your youth may be impacted by this and want to make a difference.

One way of doing this would be to support the Turning Point Trust. You can do this in a number of ways:

  1. Donating money
  2. Fundraising – also see our posts giving youth group fundraising ideas
  3. Prayer
  4. Internships – if your youth are old enough, they may wish to look into actually going to Kenya to support Turning Point directly

Question: What other activities would you do to address the global issue of hunger? Please let us know in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

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