All age spot/talks
Ideas and games
Updated Jun 2016
Videos: See our YouTube channel for videos.
The first (3 min 23) is a thank you and stories from some of One Can Trust’s clients. They talk about a
wide range of issues that brought them to the food bank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtNEmmq8GDw
The second video (1 min 45) is an animation of how the food bank works and why we exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk3CasAnDps
Game
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Pick two teams of volunteers – 1 adult and 1 child in each team
Present each team with a food parcel
Give them a minute to create a day’s menu by putting food into groups that represent what
they’d serve at each meal
Get the teams to discuss what menu they created to the congregation
Learning: That food parcels serve a family 3 meals a day for a week. That there is often difficulty in
making food go a long way. We’re used to wasting food in the UK (30-40% of food in a household goes
to waste). If the teams struggled get them to imagine how it must be hard to communicate when you’re
hungry, tired and stressed. Food parcels bring relief, not only to empty tummies but to families having a
wide range of difficulties.
Quotes about hunger
Read one or two quotes and a story about the experience of hunger.
Questions you might ask and get the congregation to reflect on:
 What physical effects did the person experience?
 What mental and emotional effects were experienced?
 Have you ever experienced anything like that?
 Were you surprised by the descriptions of hunger that you heard?
 How might we bring an end to hunger of the stomach and of the heart?
Quotes:
Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
“Hunger is a curious thing: At first it is with you all the time, walking and sleeping and in your dreams,
and your belly cries out incessantly, and there is a gnawing and a pain as if your vitals were being
devoured, and you must stop it at any cost…then the pain is no longer sharp but dull, and this too is with
you always, so that you think of food many times a day and each time a terrible sickness assails
you…then that too is gone, all pain, all desire, only a great emptiness is left, like the sky, like a well in
drought.”
Close to a billion people - one-eighth of the world's population - still live in hunger. Each year 2 million
children die through malnutrition. This is happening at a time when doctors in Britain are warning of the
spread of obesity. We are eating too much while others starve. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a
much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. Mother Teresa
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. Mother Teresa
If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger. Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut Apollo 11, Second
man on the moon.
A holiday from school should not mean hunger for our children. Dina Titus
Hunger is isolating; it may not and cannot be experienced vicariously. He who never felt hunger can
never know its real effects, both tangible and intangible. Hunger defies imagination; it even defies
memory. Hunger is felt only in the present. Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner
Hangry
The word hangry has entered common usage, the urban dictionary and is sneaking into more official
dictionaries. It started off as being applied to toddlers and young children, but now all generations are
recognizing they have trouble controlling their temper on an empty stomach.
Hangry: When you are so hungry that your lack of food causes you to become angry,
frustrated or both.
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When was the last time you were ‘hangry’?
What happened?
How did you get over it?
How do you think it would be if you didn’t have anything to eat?
What does food mean to us?
Explore the relationships between food, family and community.
Ask people to identify ways that food brings people together e.g.: Family meals, holiday & religious
celebrations, community gardens, parties, potlucks, cooking together, picnics, church dinners, etc.
Explain the conversation by asking people to reflect on all the different ways that food plays a role in
their lives. For example, food provides: nutrition, energy, life, and is a way to express love and comfort.
It also becomes a vehicle to express traditions, culture and faith.
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Do you think that we ever express love with food?
Is food ever used to comfort?
Why do we bring food to families who are grieving – or celebrating?
Does your family have any special recipes? Who created them?
Do you have any special memories of preparing food with someone you love, or of a meal that
was particularly delicious?
How do you think that hunger can impact a person’s sense of connection to their community?
How would our lives change if food was taken away from us, or our choice in food was limited?