Do you heard about 30-Hour Famine?
Do you know about World Vision?
Let me explain briefly about it.
The 30-Hour Famine began in 1971 by a church group of teenagers in Calgary, Alberta, Canada gathered and organised a 36-hour fast as a fundraiser after they saw a news of the famine that struck Ethiopia. Through fasting in 30-hour Famine, Christians experience and respond to the pain of those who suffer from hunger.
In Malaysia, the first 30-hour Famine started in 1997.
And today, more than 1.5 million young people in the world have participated in this life transforming programme organised by World Vision in various countries worldwide.
World Vision is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. World Vision focus on 3 main areas which are community development, advocacy, and emergency relief. Through community development, contributions from child sponsors are pooled together to be invested in long-term development programmes that will give your sponsored child, his or her family and community a brighter future.
As for my first time to join 30-hour Famine was in 2010, I joined as a camper in 30-hour Famine Do-It-Yourself camp in Ipoh. I got to know about this camp through my friend. After the first time of joining, I found it was a very meaningful activity for me.
This camp will carry out for 30 hours. At the moment the camp start, you will be fasting for 30 hours with all the members. And of course, we are allow to drink water. During the 30 hours, members are not sit down quietly and don't move, but all the members will participate in some station games that suit with the theme of 30-hour Famine. The theme is different for every year.
I said it is a meaningful camp for me is because through this camp, you will learn not to wasting any food in your life as you have tasted the feel of hunger and you will only realise there are so many children in the world out there die because of hunger. You will appreciate all the things that you are having like foods, clean waters, education and so on which some of the children may not have to chance to have all of these basic needs. You also can learn about self-control and persist not to have any foods even you are very hungry and tired.
For the last few hours of fasting, all of the campers all over Malaysia will gather together in a stadium at Kuala Lumpur for the countdown.
After joined as camp members for 3 years, I decided to join for something new. I joined as volunteer members in 2014 and this year. Joined as volunteer was totally different feeling. There are many different departments available for you to choose but in the end you will be assign to different department if your choice is full of people. For volunteers, we will gather in the stadium and leader of each department will teach and tell us what is our job. For this 2 years, I also join in DIY camp members seating department which is lead the DIY camp members to their seats. Therefore, we need to know the direction of every place in the stadium very clearly.
Oh ya! The different between this two years was in 2014, 30-hour Famine was conducted in a indoor stadium which all the hunger fighters can have a more comfortable places to sit down and watch for some performance in the meanwhile to wait for the final count-down of fasting.
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The stage, 2014 |
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Appreciation ceremony 2014. |
This year, 2015, 30-hour Famine was conducted in a outdoor stadium where the campers need to sit under the hot sun since the morning until 12pm and the worse was it was raining for awhile.
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Group photo session! |
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Outdoor stage, 2015. |
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100 plus! 100 plus! Anyone want to buy? Was helping friends to sell after done my job. |
These are my experiences in 30-hour Famine.
Have a nice day people! :D