How do you counteract a widely held view that today's teens are “lazy” and “selfish.” If you're Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana, you don't feed them for 30 hours.
About 120 Trinity United teens are participating today and tomorrow in the 30 Hour Famine organized by the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision. The youths are raising money through sponsorships for starving children worldwide and, to get a taste of what hunger is like, they are going 30 hours without food.
The teens will not be spending that time playing video games, downloading Jonas Brothers tunes or popping their latest zits. They are scheduled to post 600 crosses on the lawn in front of the church at 13922 Prospect Ave. Saturday to represent how many kids die every half hour from hunger-related illnesses. Teams of teens will then spread out throughout the city to participate in community service activities at Southwest Community Center, Loaves and Fishes Community Center and charity car washes and garage sales. They'll sustain themselves with only liquids.
World Vision's 2009 30 Hour Famine aims to raise $12.5 million for the poorest of the poor in countries like Malawi, Swaziland, North Korea and even right here in the good ol' US of A. The organization says it will also release a survey Monday that shows nearly 7 out of 10 parents say the current economic climate has made their teen “more aware of the needs of others.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.