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For Some, An Exercise In Hunger Goes On Forever
March 18, 2007
During her week with Hartford's Food Stamp Project, Donna Berman became dehydrated.
She had no one to blame but herself. The project was Berman's idea, in which participants pledged to live on $4 a day, roughly the dollar equivalent in food stamps an individual gets these days. Partnering with Center City Churches, Berman, executive director of the Charter Oak Cultural Center, wanted to show people what it's like to live in the land of plenty but still lack access to abundant, nutritious food.
About 100 people signed up - some to live on the restricted diet for a week, and some for this entire month. (Ye shall know us by our bright blue "Stamp Out Hunger in Hartford" bracelets. I signed up for just a week. )
The rules are simple. How you spend your $4 is up to you, but you aren't allowed to accept freebies (in my case, plates of home-baked goodies brought in by colleagues at work). There's no prescribed diet, but if you want to feel full, you eat a lot of carbohydrates, and (tap) water becomes your friend.
Berman wasn't alone in her reaction to this dietary change. Some people fought upset stomachs, others general malaise. Some lost weight. More gained it. (I kept to healthful foods, but I essentially cut my diet in half. I was hungry all week but not sick. Besides, I had help. I got a lot of helpful tips from readers who stay within a slim food budget already.)
This isn't about pretending to be poor. You can't fake poverty, and you shouldn't try. But the project does give people a sample of how difficult life is when you're hungry or malnourished.
Kimberley Fontaine of East Hampton grew up on public assistance. As she said, "We must do better, especially those of us who know what hunger is like, who ... somehow climbed out of that pit. I'm out, and I intend to stay loud and stay busy."
The project has hit a nerve. Students at Simsbury's Ethel Walker School are making bowls and attending a fundraiser where they can buy back the bowls (and soup, if they want), said Gleennia Napper, associate dean of students. The money will go to MANNA, a Center City program. A Glastonbury class planned to participate for two days.
Shehla Khan is in Connecticut from the Chicago area on a work assignment; she signed up for a week. To stay within her budget, she used her company's kitchen to cook. "Since I travel for work all the time I don't often have the opportunity to take part in any long-term volunteer program, so I do what I can wherever I am working," she said. She has also committed to raising $1,000 for Center City.
At first, Valerie Vick and her 18-year-old daughter, Kristin, of Glastonbury, worried because they love their restaurant meals - an extravagance far out of reach on the project. They planned two meals a day and they stuck to it - Kristin for a week, and her mother, so far, for the month she intends to participate - even when they ran out of breakfast food toward the end of the first week.
Vick has been thinking about past diets. "It occurred to me how sick that is, and I began drawing parallels between American females in our quest for thinness, and poverty. What if we had to do this for real? Or forever? There's a knot in my lower belly I can't seem to shake; I am hoping it will go away in Week 2." She still has two weeks to go.
All the while, people like Bette Nicotera, of West Hartford are doing the $4-a-day diet - or less every day. Nicotera has been on disability for 10 years and she said she was recently laid off from work. She supplements her diet with $10 in food stamps a month, and hand-outs from social service agencies.
Nicotera, who is in her mid-30s, has been battling anorexia and bulimia most of her adult life. Some foods are triggers for her, so she has to be careful what she eats. She avoids sugar and carbohydrates - which constitutes much of the donated food she receives. For her, the project doesn't end in April. For her, it just keeps going.
E-mail: campbell@courant.com
Repairing Their Worlds -
Program Connects Diverse Children In
Word And Deed
June 26, 2003
By FRANCIS GRANDY TAYLOR, Courant Staff Writer
Over the past six months, about 15
Hartford-area children have learned that they can change
the world.
A pilot program called "Learning to Repair the World"
brought Jewish, Christian and Muslim sixth-graders
together each month to learn about each other's cultures
and to work on a social justice project.
One girl raised money selling homemade cookies and
brownies to buy 25 McDonald's hamburgers, which she gave
to homeless people in New York. Another raised money and
purchased blankets, comforters and sheets for the women
living at My Sister's Place, a shelter in Hartford. A
third girl wrote a letter protesting the war against Iraq
and sent it to President Bush.
During each session the children discussed growing up in
their particular faith, as well as issues such as
homelessness, war, hunger and prejudice. The group worked
together on an art project, and each participant came up
with an idea to serve the community.
The idea is to teach youngsters that they can make a
difference in the world, said Rabbi Donna Berman,
executive director of the Charter Oak Cultural Center.
"You are the embodiment of the vision of a different kind
of world," Berman told the participants, who gathered with
their parents for a potluck dinner Monday night in the
gallery at Charter Oak, "a world where we don't just
tolerate each other's differences, but celebrate each
other."
The program's final event featured a multicultural menu -
baked ziti, challah bread, macaroni and cheese, pita chips
and mango salsa, potato latkes and semmi, an Indian desert
made of thin pasta, sugar, nuts and raisins.
Though the project was aimed at children, it also drew in
the adults who brought their children to the program.
"The parents began having their own informal discussions,"
said Azam Saeed, of Farmington, a member of the American
Muslim Alliance who helped develop the program, "hearing
each others' ideas and perspectives, realizing in our
daily lives that we don't always have the opportunity to
discuss" such topics with people from other backgrounds,
he said.
Sam Neuberg, 12, a West Hartford resident, collected bags
of canned food from his synagogue, Young Israel, and his
school, Bess and Paul Siegal Hebrew Academy, which he gave
to Foodshare.
"I think this project taught me a lot about what it's like
to have an impact on the community," he said.
"Kids listen to each other much better than grownups do,"
said Alvin Carter Jr., a musician with the Afro-Semitic
Experience, which combines African American and Jewish
liturgical music with jazz. Carter helped lead the monthly
sessions with the children, along with Robin Herman who
worked on art projects.
The program is expected to resume in September. For
further information, call the Charter Oak Cultural Center
at 860-249-1207.
Religious Leaders Pray For Victims, End To Bigotry
November 11, 2002
By ROBIN STANSBURY, Courant Staff Writer
Richard Silbereis said he felt both fear and sorrow Sunday
during a remembrance ceremony for the 64th anniversary of
Kristallnacht - the "night of broken glass" when thousands
of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were destroyed
throughout Germany in a rampage that for many people
signifies the start of the Holocaust.
But Silbereis, rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd
in Hartford, said he also felt tenderness. Even though the
lives that were shattered like glass that night can never
be repaired, "we can create something beautiful as an act
of hope," he said.
 Silbereis was one of about 100 area
religious leaders and others who gathered Sunday evening
at the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford for a
remembrance ceremony and candlelight walk.
This was the first time a Kristallnacht remembrance was
held at the cultural center. More than 30 local
organizations volunteered to participate, said Rabbi Donna
Berman, the center's executive director.
Holding candles and pieces of glass, the participants
walked a half-mile down Main Street, stopping to light
larger candles and pray for the victims of Kristallnacht,
as well as for an end to bigotry, hate and intolerance.
The Rev. Julio Flores, pastor of the Metropolitan
Community Church of Hartford, said he felt compelled to
attend the event because of more recent episodes of hate,
including attacks against Muslims and homosexuals.
"We are going through a period once again when intolerance
and hate are becoming a part of our culture," Flores said.
"So it's important to remember what that has done to the
world in the past."
The "night of broken glass" took place on Nov. 9 and 10,
1938. Throughout Germany, Nazis vandalized more than 7,500
Jewish-owned homes and businesses, desecrated Jewish
cemeteries and destroyed more than 260 synagogues. More
than 90 Jews were killed and tens of thousands arrested
and put in concentration camps.
"When windows shattered that night, so did the lives of
the Jews," Rabbi Elissa Kohen, of Congregation Beth Israel
in West Hartford, said during a ceremony before the walk.
"We are here tonight to say we will not tolerate hate and
ignorance because when hate and ignorance are allowed to
fester, it will always lead to violence and death." |
