Teens starve for famine attention

Teens from around the world are going hungry for a good cause.

On Feb. 21-22, teens are participating in the 30-Hour Famine, a program run by World Vision to raise money and awareness of how hunger and famine are killing people killing globally.

This year, more than 1 million teens are participating, in 21 countries from around the world.

When a youth group decides to do the famine, they first start by raising money through donors and sponsors. That money goes to help feed children around the world.

Then, the teens go 30 hours without food, so that they can have a sense of what hunger is like.

During the 30-hour famine, teens and youth groups engage in different activities, such as community-service projects and volunteer work around the area.

Last year, World Vision used money to help families in countries such as Peru and Ethiopia, as well as here in the United States.

The money was used to: help build new irrigation systems to help family farmers keep their crops alive during the dry season, ensuring food sources; to help farmers put in new wells; to help farmers learn how to diversify their crops by growing vegetables for communities; for medical care and school supply packets for new schools; and to held fund new teachers in poor areas.

For more information about the 30-Hour Famine, interested people can visit the Web site www.30hourfamine.org.

World Vision is a Christian-based organization that provides hundreds of services to the poorest areas of the world. With every program, the word of Christ is spread. Some areas in which programs are taking place right now include relief against drought in Ethiopia, Southern Africa and the fight against AIDS and helping farmers in Brazil.

Another program World Vision offered through the end of 2002 was a Bible program, in which every Bible purchased through the organization resulted in a second Bible being donated to a child in need.

The most basic program World Vision offers is the sponsorship of a family or child. People can visit the nonprofit agency's Web site at www.worldvision.org to find out how to sponsor a child or family.

World Vision relies on a coast-to-coast partnership with churches in America. Nationwide, more than 85,000 volunteers spent more than 617,000 hours in service to benefit at-risk children and their families in the United States. More than 7,000 churches in the country, as well as countless faith-based organizations, partnered with World Vision last year to help meet the needs of more than 730,000 children and adults, the organization said.

In America, World Vision focuses on several issues. The first is at-risk children, by addressing the academic, social and spiritual needs of children; the second is families in crisis, by motivating and training churches to reach out and help.