Giving Thought To Boiled Potatoes

Note: read my article on what the hunger dinner is before reading this one. 🙂

The Hunger Dinner was very inspirational, I would say. No, that sounds a bit too generalized. We’ve finished promoting this event and the fruits have blossomed!

How do I start? F0od perhaps?

Talk about differences there. Sharing is caring, though.

Alice was the guest and Alice is part of our committee hosting the event! I’m leaving you dazzled on purpose. What makes it even more confusing is that they are both YAA bloggers too.

YVC volunteers, remember the bowl making project?

That was the light-hearted side of things, the team bonding, seeing guests enjoy their dinners, all that. Here’s where the actual brainstorming began.

There were quite a few speeches from representatives of organizations, including the Alex health clinic, who founded a Youth health clinic (good job!) from last year’s donations, Social Venture Partners, and of course Youth Central. I was particularly was moved by these quotes in the address by John Rook of the Calgary Homeless Foundation. They only add up to my bank of knowledge about poverty.

Our youth speaker was very motivational; Theo Dillenburg was a drug addict for 7 years starting when he attended high school, ending up in homelessness. He found his way out of addiction, but only after he realized something, as he accounts it, that “homeless does not discriminate.”

Homeless, in his eyes, is not a “character defect” as the stigma says. He expressed gratitude for those that helped him out of it, out of his trouble in Hastings in Vancouver, who assisted him in stepping out of poverty here, such as miracle workers and the Exit.

What does this picture symbolize? This was John Rook’s analogy to Poverty as a whole. He mentioned that instead of a recycling bin, he wanted a picture of a bear-proof garbage bin to display how people who are impoverished are forced to step out of their natural ways to gain food just like bears who scavenge in towns.

That’s potatoes for thought.  We are now in our fifth year of the Ten Year Plan to End Homeless, aren’t we? A big applause to all of the speakers for their contributions.

A big thank you too, to the entire YVC steering committee (maybe not myself since I was so lazy), especially the Hunger Dinner sub-committee!