The Muhlenberg Weekly

Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: News

On Feb. 10-11, eight members of S.H.A.R.E. (Students Have a Real Effect), a community service group on campus, attended the 2007 East Coast Student Conference on Hunger and Homelessness at Boston University in Boston, Mass.. Students from across the country gathered for this event, as they do every year.

Miles Davison '08, Jenna Zorn '08, Sara Beitman '10, Jamie Goldman '08, Ali Fales '08, Krista Mitchell '08, Madeline Kaplan '07 and Chelsea Meenan '07 were the 8 students from the College who attended the event which was sponsored by the Community Service Office. At the Conference, the students had the opportunity to listen to various speakers, participate in food drives, attend workshops where they learned tons of facts, statistical information and legislation relating to issues of hunger and homelessness. As part of the event, many of the students slept on mats in the school gymnasium.

Goldman, who attended the event, said an interesting fact he learned while at the conference was that, "Only 50% of people who are eligible for food stamps take advantage of them. This is mainly due to lack of information and stigma about people who use food stamps. They are trying to develop a card that looks like a debit card to help this matter."

Nearly 850 million people suffer from hunger or homelessness worldwide. That's almost 1/6 of the world's total population. S.H.A.R.E. has a Hunger and Homelessness Awareness week at the College every year in hopes of relaying all of this pertinent information to the student body.

Goldman said, "As a group, S.H.A.R.E. will be looking into starting various initiatives such as a Hunger Cleanup, Food Salvage, Community Garden, Urban Plunge and Lobbying Local and Federal Government in order to raise awareness, take action and push for change at the legislative level. We will be looking to partner with community and campus organizations in these efforts."

Fales said they all had "a really good time" and it wound up being a "great bonding experience for everyone who went. We wound up learning a lot."

Those at the Conference had the opportunity to learn about new advocacy issues, which Fales is really excited about since they hope to bring these new issues to the campus throughout the semester and put them into action in the fall during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness week.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools