Middle School Students Join on Two Continents to Fight World Hunger

By Parth Dwivedi

HOUSTON: The St. Francis Episcopal Day School hosted an award ceremony Friday, May 17, to recognize the St. Francis Wolves Against Hunger – a group consisting of seven of their graduating eighth grade students under the faculty guidance of Debbie Harris – which participated in the World Hunger Leadership Challenge.

The ceremony began with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the Prayer of St. Francis, after which point Ashley Butler took the podium. As Executive Director of Lead2Feed, an initiative whose purpose is to foster leadership amongst middle school students in the fight against world hunger, Butler spoke on the importance of “developing future leaders and giving back to the community.” Ashley was there to present a check for $25,000 to St. Francis Episcopal Day School as top prize from the Yum! Brand Foundation for the work done by the Wolves Against Hunger in the Lead2Feed sponsored nationwide challenge.

More than 300,000 middle and high school students in 1,500 schools participated in the nationwide challenge that encouraged students to develop their leadership skills through projects that focus on solving hunger worldwide. Yum! Brands Foundation provided nearly $250,000 in prize money grants to 140 schools for US public charities engaged in hunger relief programs.

Shortly after the ceremony started, David Novak, joined via Skype to congratulate the team himself, adding that the students recognized were the real heroes and heroines. Novak serves as Executive Chair and CEO of Yum! Brands Inc. and co-founder of the Lift A Life Foundation, both of which partnered with the USA TODAY Charitable Foundation to create the World Hunger Leadership Challenge.

The recognition was shared with another student group of similar age, in K.L. International School, located in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India, about 100 km northwest of New Delhi, with which the St. Francis Episcopal day School had been in close collaboration for the previous two semesters on the award-winning project. The students from St. Francis Day School packed 5,100 sack lunches, collected more than 6,500 cans of food, and packed boxes at a local food bank, while the students from KLI volunteered time at a local orphanage run by Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity.

Earlier this year, Harris heard about the World Hunger Leadership Challenge, and felt that the work of both her students and those at KLI School, was deserving of recognition, highlighting each student’s unique abilities and contributions and added that they even worked on their days off.

The collaboration between St. Francis and KLI School began when Debbie took on the role of organizing an awareness campaign for World Water Day in 2012, internationally observed on March 22 every year. Debbie came into contact with Jasdeep Lamba, whose father-in-law Kuldeep Singh Lamba serves as Executive Chair of KLI School. Together they arranged for a one-time Skype discussion between the students and faculty of the two schools, laying a foundation for future partnering.

When the next school-year started, Debbie and Jasdeep and her husband Dev took the initiative to get the ball rolling on a larger scale, this time arranging for six Skype forums over the course of two semesters in order to give students a greater appreciation for serious problems like hunger and poverty. Their involvement also entailed taking steps to become more active in their respective communities and exchanging ideas with one another as to various ways of doing so.

Taylor Bowers, one of the students recognized, gave the example of canned food drives being common in American schools, but not quite so to the students he Skyped with. Ian Southwell, another awardee, spoke about lessons he learned from the project, “You hear about poverty in other countries, but I never realized how bad it really is. The number of poor in India is almost the same as the entire population of the U.S.”

Jasdeep said that the students at KLI School had been hard at work on Project 365, in which at least one hungry person – but usually more – is fed every single day of the year. It is entirely up to the students how to coordinate such a demanding task, fostering both teamwork and individual headship.

The award money won by the St. Francis Wolves Against Hunger will be given to Kids’ Meals Houston, a charity whose main goal is to feed hungry and poor children under the age of five, too young to go to school where they would receive state-sponsored meals. The work done by KLI School students has gone to benefit The Earth Saviours Foundation, a local charity in New Delhi, India.