Service Project

Catholic Charities fulfills the Church’s role in the mission of charity to anyone in need by providing compassionate, competent and professional services that strengthen and support individuals, families and communities based on the value and dignity of human life.  For service project, I volunteered to help out with the community dinners coordinated by the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago.  These dinners were for families who lack food security and do not know whether or not they will be able to eat dinner on a daily basis.  I volunteered at this community once in September of 2014 and once in February of 2015.  The dinner took place at St. Christopher's in Midlothian, Illinois.  Here, I helped prepare and serve the meals for those who attended the dinner.  As I served some of these people, I was able to make general conversation and joke around a little.  The atmosphere was considerably positive.  One interaction I had with one of them that I still remember is when dinner was over and I was starting to clean up.  There were two gentlemen talking about baseball and I had to ask them if they were done with something so I could put it away.  I made a little side comment about one of the teams and the man made a joke back and then asked my opinion on the team's recent game.  Between the three of us the conversation went on for no more than thirty seconds but I felt i brought some positive energy to the conversation because within that thirty seconds, I was able to make them laugh and joke around about how poorly one of the teams performed.  After this experience, I learned more about food insecurity.  Coming into this community dinner, I thought there would be some homeless people there.  Honestly, I do not think there were any there.  The crowd consisted of people who are unable to feed themselves or their families due to whatever situation they were in.  I could not believe how many local people were food insecure.  I would have liked to known why they did not have access to food through government help so that they would not have to attend this dinner.  I would do this service learning again because I really enjoyed serving people in need and providing them with a positive atmosphere so that they felt comfortable and safe.

Connecting Sources

“Bread for the World” is the backbone of these sources.  It provides a wide variety of information about hunger including statistics and ways that we can overcome this problem.  Every other source contains similar information.  However, there are different ways to approach this issues as you can see in Seradeldin’s “Abolishing Hunger” where the use of science and technology can extremely useful.  “Bread for the world is the base for these sources but some may go more in depth with information.  For example, the FAOs “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014” talks more about the two programs, the Millennium Development Goal and the World Food Summit.


Source C, which is “Childhood Hunger” by Eugene M. Lewit and Nancy Kerrebrock, is going to connect with Source D, which is “Childhood, Hunger, and Poverty” by Sally Raphel.  These two sources both give facts about hunger but Source C is focused on the 1970s and 1980s while Source D focuses on the facts now.  It will help see different trends by comparing the data. We can see how hunger among children has changed throughout history.


Source B, which is “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014” by the FAO, is going to connect with Source E, which is “Abolishing Hunger” by Ismail Seradeldin.  Both sources look at food insecurity from different angles and/ dig deeper to see why hunger is still around.  However, Source B is going to be geared more towards the two programs discussed in the article while Source E takes more of scientific approach to hunger.  Both are different from the normal approaches to eliminating hunger.

Paraphrasing sources

1. “Critical advances in the areas of land, water, plants, and aquatic resources will enable us to take a variety of actions that can help put us back on track to significantly reduce hunger in a few short years.”

- Striving to acquire more resources from the land, water, and plants in this new technologically advanced world can help solve the problem of food insecurity better than the old solutions.

- Hunger can be dramatically reduced with the help of our new advanced technology by strategically collecting our abundant amount of resources from our planet.

- Our progression in collecting the abundant resources of the earth, such as land, water, and plants, will drastically help reduce the amount of people experiencing food insecurity in the world.

2. “Sustained political commitment at the highest level, with food security and nutrition as top priorities, is a prerequisite for hunger eradication.”

- To eliminate hunger, you need a stable government that takes food insecurity and malnutrition seriously.

- Sincere efforts from every country’s government to eliminate food insecurity is one of the most important solutions.

- Half-hearted efforts to battle food insecurity are not sufficient to eradicate hunger, which is why this subject needs to be put at the top of political agendas.



Our progression in collecting the abundant resources of the earth, such as land, water, and plants, will drastically help reduce the amount of people experiencing food insecurity in the world.  Coming up with a strategy on how to approach and beat the fight against hunger is not the hard part.  The hard part is placing this issue on the top of the priority list and sticking to the plan. Half-hearted efforts to battle food insecurity are not sufficient to eradicate hunger, which is why this subject needs to be put at the top of political agendas.  Powerful political figures have the ability to inspire people to join together to take hunger seriously so that it can be defeated.

Annotated Bibliography

Seradeldin, Ismail. "Abolishing Hunger." Issues in Science and Technology 25.4 (2009) : 35-38 Web. 22 March 2015.

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lewisu.edu/docview/195933079?pq-origsite=summon

Science and Technology can be essential tools when trying to find a solution for hunger around the globe.  This article targets the science community, as well as people interested in advanced technology.  People interested in more advanced technology may be better off than the average person so by targeting them, there is a better chance for support with eliminating hunger.  Food insecurity is rising and these two tools can help bring that down.  Research has been done and they have come up with a few ways to have better food security.  One of the more important ways is to increase the production of food so that there is more and equal to the amount of output as there is people.  The population is growing and the food production needs to be growing as well instead of staying the same.  Most people wouldn’t think of science and technology when looking for a solution to end hunger but in this paper I will explain how the two can help.

Lewit, Eugene M. Kerrebrock, Nancy. "Childhood Hunger." The Future of Children 7.1 (1997) n. pag. Web. 22 March 2015.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lewisu.edu/stable/1602585?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

This article discusses hunger among children between the 1970's and 1990's.  It gives statistics for different categories, including percentages of the food insufficiency throughout the years as well as rate it has either increased or decreased.  The audience targeted is everyone who is concerned with the past and how we can use it to improve our approach to this matter.  It also shows the percentage of individuals who reported food insufficiency by age groups. Overall, this article shows how hunger or food insufficiency is measured.  I am going to compare the statistics from the past to the ones now, as well as the approaches used to try to eliminate food insecurity.

Raphel, Sally. "Children, Hunger, and Poverty." Journal of Childern and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing 27.1 (2014) : 45-47 Web. 22 March 2015.

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lewisu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=1f9d99c1-315a-4264-b498-d45abc28e028%40sessionmgr4004&vid=0&hid=4107&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=ccm&AN=2012448151

The article targets the general public and tries to convince them that food insecurity is all around us and is a seriously matter.  The Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing shows the updated statistics from 2011 of food insecurity among children.  This article focuses on children and how even short term hunger can affect them.  The general topic of poverty is discussed and is compared on an international scale.  Reading this article hits home to many people because imagining a child starving is not something you want to do.  By showing the cold hard facts of how many children go to bed starving can inspire more people to help.  The 2010 Healthy, Hunger-free kids Act is discussed and explained as well.  Food security is the foundation of all other health, education, and economic development.  I will use this source to specifically target hunger among children and explain how we as a society can eliminate it.

Bread for the World. n.p n.d 26 March 2015.

http://www.bread.org/

Bread for the World is Christian organization try to end hunger at home and around the globe.  They help communities organize programs to help feed the hungry.  This website provides a wide variety of information about hunger including recent statistics and how we can get rid of hunger if we all work together.  Bread for the World targets everyone and its website has a vast amount of information that appeals to different areas of food insecurity from children to adults.  This organization shows different ways they try to eliminate food insecurity and also encourages others to join them in the movement.  This source will help me show many different way that someone can help defeat hunger. 

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014." n.p n.d. 26 March 2015.

http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/2014/en/

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) are two programs that this organization is using to get rid of hunger.  They look at hunger and malnutrition on a global scale but know where more help is needed in some areas.  The overall report of how these organizations have affected hunger and malnutrition as well as how they are going about doing it.  For people who want to dig deeper into the reasoning behind food insecurity, this is the website for them.  This organization provides further research into why this issue is still occurring.  This source will be very helpful with distinguishing and comparing malnutrition and hunger.

Project Proposal

Food insecurity is an evolving problem around the world but there are many ways that that we as a society can help bring hunger to an end.  There are different levels of help when it comes to hunger.  Science and technology, with their extensive research on the hunger problem in the world, can play a vital role in the elimination of food insecurity.  Not only do organizations like Bread for the World have come up with solutions for hunger but communities all around the globe come together to try to help the problem.  We, as a whole society, need to take this problem of food insecurity seriously because with the advanced technology and experience, we should have no problem with eliminating hunger. One of the questions I pose in this paper is, “How can science and technology play a role in eliminating food insecurity?”  By gathering statistics of the past up until the future will help figure out what areas are more vulnerable to hunger as well as the amount of help needed in different areas.  The second question I am going to explore in my research paper is, “How has the approach to abolishing hunger changed throughout history?”  There have been a few different strategies used throughout the years and considering hunger is still around today, they have not be very successful.  This paper will also explore the question, “Who are the people who are experiencing food insecurity and why are they are they going hunger while others of the same category are able to get help?” There are many different people from all around the globe are experiencing hunger, but why? We live in an advanced world with programs to help and yet there are still people going to bed hungry.

3 sources

Seradeldin, Ismail. "Abolishing Hunger." Issues in Science and Technology 25.4 (2009) : 35-38 Web. 22 March 2014.

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lewisu.edu/docview/195933079?pq-origsite=summon

Lewit, Eugene M. Kerrebrock, Nancy. "Childhood Hunger." The Future of Children 7.1 (1997) n. pag. Web. 22 March 2014.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lewisu.edu/stable/1602585?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Raphel, Sally. "Children, Hunger, and Poverty." Journal of Childern and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing 27.1 (2014) : 45-47 Web. 22 March 2014.

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lewisu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=1f9d99c1-315a-4264-b498-d45abc28e028%40sessionmgr4004&vid=0&hid=4107&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=ccm&AN=2012448151

Rhetorical Analysis of the new Science Wing