If you pass by John McCrae Public School on Water Street Saturday and see a bunch of people out swaying their hips, don’t be alarmed. They’re just hula hooping for hunger.
A hula-hoop-a-thon is happening at the school from noon until 5 p.m. on Saturday, an effort to raise funds for two local organizations that work to eliminate hunger in Guelph.
And though you may not think that affluent Guelph has a hunger problem, it certainly does, says April Burrows of Flow Office Wisdom, a local company that helps local business and organizations do what they do better.
Flow is a certified benefit corporation, part of its mandate being to ensure positive impacts on society, workers, community and the environment. It has been around for three years, and founded Hooping for Hunger as one of its making-a-difference initiatives.
It brought Chalmers Community Services Centre and The Hunger Project Canada in as co-sponsors and beneficiaries of a fundraising event with a $15,000 target this year. Chalmers works locally to alleviate hunger. The Hunger Project is a global movement committed to the sustainable end of hunger, empowering people around the world to be self-reliant.
“Flow decided at the very beginning that we would align ourselves and build some relationships with organizations that held our values,” Burrows said. “We also decided that we would have a local and a global focus in our fundraising.”
Hooping for Hunger involves teams of four or more hula hoopers. Each team pays a $40 registration fee, and each is asked to raise money through sponsorships. At least one person from each team has to hoop for the entire four hours of hooping. There are rest breaks, of course.
So far, there are over 75 people participating. More are welcome. Email [email protected] to find out more, or register a team online.
Burrows said there are educational/awareness components timed into the event, so that every 20 minutes or so there will be a story or statistic related to hunger in our community or global hunger issues.
Hunger is growing in Guelph, Burrows said. Chalmers Community Service Centre has experienced a 300 per cent increase in the numbers of people using the organization’s food bank in the west end. The area has a higher population of recent immigrants to Canada, she said, which partly explains the statistic.
About 10.6 per cent of the individuals that live in Guelph and Wellington live in low-income circumstances, she indicated. There are about 1,500 people here on the waiting list for affordable housing, and 16 per cent of Guelph households are food insecure, meaning there are times throughout the month when they can not afford to buy food.
“These are not the greatest statistics, especially for a community like ours that is quite affluent,” Burrows added. “I don’t think people realize how much poverty there is here.”
Flow is partnering with the two organizations to help them get their messages out and to raise money for their causes. Both organizations, she said, are looking for ways to end hunger, so that there is not such a strong reliance on food banks.
