24 Hour Sponsored Famine & Coin Line

Poverty kills 30,000 children every day. That's one child every three seconds!!!

Over the weekend of 22nd and 23rd February 2003, the young people at Shefford's Baptist and Methodist Churches did something about it, and we were pleased to help them...

Approximately 20 Young people from YNU Shefford Baptist Church and Shefford Methodist Church youth group, chose to go without food for 24 hours - raising money so that those without this choice could eat.
They signed up to the 24 hour famine organised by the international development agency World Vision. The sponsorship raised over the weekend of 22-23rd February 2003 will provide emergency food and fund strategic programmes to fight hunger for some of the 15 million people facing starvation in South Africa

 Coin Line

With each coin representing one of the people who die every 24 hours from hunger, 24,000 coins were needed.

Coins were collected in Shefford's Churches and pubs and the youngsters layed the coins out on the floor of St Michaels. Although the original idea was to make a line of coins, their ingenuity and artistic talents soon got the better of them as these photographs show!

As the hunger started to kick in at around 5pm on day one (4 hours without food!) the designs started to include the names of favourite foods, sweets etc. Their 24 hour famine was going to be a real challenge...

In addition to the coin collection and sponsorship, funds were also raised by a bring-and-buy stall and an opportunity to throw wet sponges at the local ministers together with some brave volunteers. Given the bightingly cold wind that was blowing on the day this was truly an act of self-sacrifice and commitment!

Steve Summerfield, the local Baptist Minister (shown here on the right) was clearly out to show his in-depth knowledge of Yoof Kulcha by doing a passable imitation of Ali G, complete with a massive green Afro wig, flourescent yellow cycle cape, and those oh-so-cool goggles.

Reeespec' Steve...

 Local Impact

When our photographer shambled in at 3pm to take a few shots for this article, he was informed that Peter from the Shefford Town Website had not only "beaten him to it", but had already uploaded his photos to the website!

If that's not an endorsement of the efforts of Shefford's youngsters, we don't know what is! Click Here to see Peter's photos. WELL DONE THAT MAN!

 Results...

Although we don't know exactly how much has been raised by this event just yet, Steve Summerfield has promised to let us know as soon as the final figure has been calculated. Early indications are that it will run to several hundred pounds, so a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who helped!

 Stop Press - News from Steve Summerfield...

23rd February 2003

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