Twenty-nine people (23 youth and 6 adults) from the Presbyteries of Albany, Utica, Northern NY, Susquehanna Valley and Cayuga-Syracuse participated in a learning experience to explore our Christian faith and our responsibility as citizens.  During the Presbyterian trip to the United Nations, the other members of the group and I learned a great deal. As a prelude in mid-January, we went to New Hartford and participated in a discussion concerning racism in the United States. The main point we discussed was how black Americans have been at a disadvantage for years due to the actions of the United States government decades ago. This made all of us at the discussion more aware of the prejudice against black people in America and made us want to take action to prevent it.

Over February break the group traveled to the United Nations headquarters in New York City. There we talked about hunger and extreme poverty in the world as well as how to end it. Several guest speakers came.  The first was a U.N. employee who is an economist.  He discussed with us how to end extreme poverty and hunger in the world. He also told us about the United Nations’ eight Millennium Development Goals, which are to eradicate HIV/AIDS and other diseases,  promote gender equality, end extreme poverty and hunger, assure universal primary education, to ensure environmental stability, to improve maternal health, reduce child mortality, and develop a partnership for global development. He also informed us of what we could do to help accomplish these goals by 2015.

The next speaker was from a non-profit organization called BREAD FOR THE WORLD. She focused on world hunger and told us the four main obstacles in the way of eliminating it. These obstacles are distribution, lack of education, need for debt cancellation, and lack of technology.

The third speaker was the Director of the Presbyterian Hunger Program.  She informed us of how to stop hunger through the church. The Presbyterian Church in the United States will soon be having a fast.  She invited us to fast from being plugged in. In other words, we could take time off from using technology and prayerfully contemplate ways we can work to end world hunger.

The time I spent both preparing for the conference and in the conference was extremely powerful. It increased my awareness concerning both world hunger and racism. I plan on informing myself more on both topics so I can find a way to contribute to ending these worldwide problems.