About the Famine
What's the 30 Hour Famine?
The
30 Hour Famine is the world's biggest youth fundraiser. The idea is to have a fun, inspiring experience while leaning about poverty. Young people go hungry for a day to help save lives around the globe.
How many people participate?
More than 60,000 Canadian youth went hungry last year, to raise funds to fight poverty and injustice. More than half a million young people participated worldwide.
How much money is raised?
Last year, young Canadians raised more than $3.1 million for World Vision programs.
What happens at a Famine?
Events are bounded only by the imagination of the young people participating! Last year's included:
- Some groups built shantytowns in their gyms, from cardboard, string and plastic wrap. They experienced hunger, but also life in extremely tight quarters.
- Other groups screened movies with meaning, films with social justice themes or links to poverty, malnutrition and conflict.
- Others made time capsules filled with news clippings about the current state of the world's poor. Capsules were then buried in the schoolyard to be retrieved and reviewed for this year's Famine. Has anything changed?
How did the Famine start?
The first Famine happened in 1971, in Calgary. A 17-year-old Canadian, Ruth Roberts, staged a "starve-in" with her friends in a church basement to draw attention to the plight of African children in a continent-wide famine.
The group raised $600 for World Vision to help famine victims, piquing the interest of a local TV station. The event caught on, and soon schools and youth groups were participating across Canada. In the early 1980s, with World Vision's support, the
30 Hour Famine became an international fundraiser.
