During this learning time, participants are invited to describe, recall the taste, and be grateful for their favourite food. While relating this good taste to the good mood which follows after eating their favourite meals, participants will then be reminded of the worldwide famine and hunger resulting from injustice and economic greed. This lesson’s main aim is to awaken our inner spirits to fight against injustice and economic greed with all our might, including that of prayer.
Equipment: empty plate templates, food pictures, crayons, pencils
Time
40 minutes
How to carry out this lesson
- Start by taking the time to watch this short video entitled: Children and The Empty Plate Test
- Start by taking the time to watch this short video entitled: Children and The Empty Plate Test
- Start by taking the time to watch this short video entitled: Children and The Empty Plate Test
- Start by taking the time to watch this short video entitled: Food For The Poor..
- Start by taking the time to watch this short video entitled: Food For The Poor.
- Start by taking the time to watch this short video entitled: Food For The Poor
2. Take some time to contrast and compare your day and the food you eat with that of these kids.
3. It is a pity that sometimes we do not appreciate what we have and we seem to forget our blessings. To help yourself grow in gratitude towards your received blessings, you can print a placemat template from the pdfs resources available and on the plate draw or stick pictures of your favourite food.
4. Now, try to remember when was the last time you ate your favourite food. On the same placemat template, next to the plate you can now answer these questions.
How did your favourite food taste?
How did you feel when you saw your favourite food on the plate and you ate it?
5. Unfortunately, like in the small video of step 1 a lot of children and even grownups around the world have empty plates in front of them almost every day. Many forgot when was the last time if there ever was a time in their life when they enjoyed the taste of their favourite food.
6. Can you think why these people suffer famine and at times they die from hunger?
7. People are suffering from hunger not because there is not enough food in the world for everyone but because some political and business leaders are not ready to share what they have with others who do not have it. This is called economic greed. This economic greed leads to injustice. Most probably you felt pity when you saw the clip of step 1.
8. Feeling pity and speaking of unfairness on our own will not stop these children and their families from suffering famine and dying because of hunger. Can you think of ways how you can help?
Here are some ideas of how you can help:-
a) be grateful for what you have.
b) share what you have in your everyday life without expecting anything in return.
c) avoid waste and gluttony.
d) ) support missionary initiatives and other programs.
The video ‘ Feeding America Food Rescue’ can show that there are possible ways of learning how to make use of our food wisely
9. All of this will still be not enough to end famine and hunger worldwide. For this dream to come true some political and business leaders need to change their values, ideas and priorities. For this to happen we can all unite in prayer.
10. Find a comfortable place, close your eyes and pray to God to open the minds and the hearts of all world leaders and businessmen to be ready to share their resources without expecting anything in return. In this way, there will be no more empty plates for anyone. Example:- Dear God, while I thank you for the food I have, I ask you please to forgive me when I waste it and to please guide all the leaders in the world to make the right decisions and have at their hearts the safeguarding of human dignity. In this way, everyone will have his share of food daily.
11. You can now place your placemat showing the drawing of your favourite food somewhere next to where you eat your food so that it will remind you to thank God for your daily food and to pray for the world leaders to be willing to share their share.
The video link entitled: ‘Ending Poverty and Hunger ‘ can help with raising awareness that when we speak of our own dignity we are speaking of human dignity. Given so, if one human elsewhere around the globe is suffering from hunger, we are all suffering and we all need to do something to safeguard our dignity as human beings. We are one human race-together we should stand.
Further to the links provided for this lesson, for the Catholic Believers this video link: ‘Empty’ https://skitguys.com/videos/empty can offer some extra food for thought for the root of the problem of greediness.
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