“17,500 Calgarians are living below the current ‘living wage’..”
“1 in 3 Children are under poverty in Alberta’s First Nations’ communities….”
“Poverty affects 1 in 5 children under the age of 15 in Calgary..”
Statistics on a report matter; yet so does your hands-on experience of eating what can be often deemed “third-world food” by us when we feast at the dinner table every day.
Hunger Dinner in it self is an oxymoron; how can someone be hungry but still have dinner?
Yet this name in itself reflects the true state of poverty in Calgary. Many often have something to eat, but not enough. Many are “homeless and hungry”, after all.
Think about youth who need nutrients to grow but can’t even get their daily ration of warmth in the Winter.
I’ve seem many sympathetic posts on Facebook such as just in our recent snowstorm about how the bitter freeze kills the kindle in the hearts of those suffering from homelessness. I’ve written a blog series on Seniors and Poverty and what that demographic is specifically suffering from. We’ve pledged to end homelessness here in Calgary, no matter how many times that type of recurring slogan appears but no action spawns from it.
Many of us who have never experienced poverty in our lives are ignorant about this issue, whether it’s the dictionary definition of lacking awareness of this topic or even perhaps our own definition of choosing not to believe that it even existed. I’ve stepped right past poverty, forgetting to take a look it.
It’s all forgiveable, however. Awareness can’t come quicker for anything you don’t know.
Join the Youth Volunteer Corps (YVC) Steering Committee of Youth Central  (a big kudos to the Hunger Dinner sub-committee!) and SVP Calgary this Sunday for the Hunger Dinner, an event where three classes of dinner are served to participants randomly and you’ll hear inspirational speeches on real experiences. There will be raffle tickets sold, and if you are a lucky winner, you get to which organization to donate a basket of food to.
This is our last push for you to attend! From sharing my blog post on facebook, clicking away to svphunger.org to get your tickets for this year, or even just informing a friend who may be interested, anything helps. The rest of the YVC steering committee and I really appreciate anything you can do to help!
A simple remark is all you need.
Watch this video from Shaw TV for more! (You also get to meet Hodon, the Program Manager of YVC) 🙂
This is brilliant, good job Wentao!