November 30, 2011
Think you can handle 100 hours of poverty? That was the question
and call to action behind The 100 Hours of Poverty Challenge held
at St. John’s University’s Queens and Staten Island campuses on
October 6-10, 2011. A collaborative initiative of Campus
Ministry, the School of
Law, the Vincentian
Institute for Social Action (VISA) and Student Life, the event
aimed to cultivate a deeper understanding of what it means to live
with food insecurity.
For the duration of 100 Hours, over 200 St. John’s students and
community members walked in the footsteps of individuals and
families who participate in the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition
Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamps Program. They
planned meals, shopped for groceries and consumed food around a
budget of $6.48 a day or $27.49 for the entire 100 hours. At the
outset of his 100 hours, Law School Dean
Michael A. Simons shared in a blog post: “It’s already clear to
me that this will not be easy: eating healthy will be a challenge,
living without the convenience of prepared food will also be a
challenge, as will drinking mostly water for 100 hours. It’s also
clear that living on a bare-bones budget is time consuming.
Planning, shopping, cooking — all must be done very carefully to
stay on budget. And, much like someone who is actually going
hungry, I’m spending a lot of my time and energy thinking about
food.”
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The difficulty of the challenge was a common theme of
participants’ Tweets and online journal entries during the event.
“100 Hours of Poverty isn’t a contest or a game, or even an
endurance test,” said
Jennifer Baum, an Assistant Professor of Clinical Legal
Education who heads the Law School’s Child Advocacy Clinic and is a
member of the event’s steering committee. “It is an unparalleled
learning opportunity which allows students to more fully experience
and comprehend why we engage in service to the poor. When we
experience hunger ourselves, we understand on a new level the deep
ethical and moral obligation we have to stand with our neighbors
and to end suffering ― here at home and across the globe.”
Professor Baum shared this perspective in her welcome remarks at a
dinner program closing 100 Hours. She was joined by Ketienne
Telemaque, a resident minister at St. John’s who offered a simple
and stirring prayer recognizing the spiritual lessons inherent in
giving of ourselves to see how others journey to sustain
themselves. Student speaker Sherry Bryant of St. John’s Advantage
Academy then engaged the audience with her personal story of being
a single mother of two benefitting from the SNAP Program. She
shared that SNAP recipients are encouraged and supported to eat
healthily, noting that an increasing number of farmers’ markets are
licensed to accept SNAP payments.
The closing program continued with a presentation by
Dr. Barrett Brenton, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at
St. John’s who also serves as Associate Director for the Center for
Global Development; St. John's College Faculty Coordinator for
Academic Service-Learning and Community-Based Research; and as a
Senior Research Fellow with the Vincentian Center for Church and
Society. Resonating with the message that freedom from hunger is a
fundamental human right, the presentation offered data and insights
on the prevalence of food insecurity in America and set out the
obstacles to hunger reduction. Reflecting on the 100 Hours of
Poverty Challenge, Dr. Brenton said: “I was impressed at how this
unique approach to poverty awareness provided students with an
opportunity to see not only the ways in which food insecurity
impacts their day to day lives, but also the larger
political-economic and social issues underlying hunger in the
U.S. I believe this experience will make them advocates for
social justice issues surrounding efforts to reduce poverty and
hunger in America and worldwide.”
Although the 100 Hours of Poverty Challenge has ended, the
opportunities for students to engage in service opportunities
related to hunger awareness continues. Undergraduates interested in
these opportunities should contact stjservice@stjohns.edu or
giancatc@stjohns.edu.
Interested law students should contact andronj@stjohns.edu.
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