Plans for Global Youth Service Day 2009 are in full swing: Check out what people across the country are doing to serve their communities and read on to find out what’s going on at the Campus Kitchen at Northwestern University.

You are a single mother with 3 children, a 3 year-old, 9 year-old and 13 year-old. Your gross annual pay at your minimum wage job is $10,700. You use public transportation. Your 3 year-old is in child care, some of which is subsidized, and your other children go to public school. You live in a small 2 bedroom apartment.

You have to budget for rent, electricity, cable, clothing, cell phone bill, school supplies, food, entertainment, and miscellaneous expenses.

What do you do?

Then your 13 year old daughter breaks her arm and needs medical attention. What now?

On Global Youth Service Day 2009, high school students will be discussing these questions and more at CKNU’s First Annual High School Leadership Conference. Joanna Racho, CKNU coordinator, hopes that through considering these questions, students will broaden their understanding of what poverty is and who is affected by it.

“I think it’s important for students to understand that hunger and living in poverty isn’t something that just happens far away in the city or in 3rd world countries. They should know that it occurs to some of their classmates in school or some of their neighbors in their own community,” said Joanna.

Six to eight local high schools will have the opportunity to send five of their students, who will be selected through an application process. Not only does Joanna plan to have them think and talk, but she’ll also guide them toward ways they can take action.

Specifically, she’s looking to recruit members for the Summer High School Leadership Team, which helps run CKNU’s Feeding our Futures program. When school is not in session, students enrolled in the National School Lunch Program are left without that source of food. CKNU’s program ensures that they have nutritious meals–they distributed nearly 20,000 last summer.

High school volunteers play an essential part in running CKNU’s summer operations, and Joanna is excited about the role they can play in stopping hunger.

“High school students have great resources at their disposal and can mobilize much more quickly than previous generations, so they are able to come together and make a greater impact to improve the lives of those living in poverty and need some assistance,” she said.

Combining knowledge and service, reflection and action is essential if GYSD is to become not just a day of service, but an event that inspires a new way of thinking and new modes of action.

Said Joanna: “I’m hoping that the students will understand that food insecurity and poverty occurs close to home and that they have the power to do something about it. I want them to know that not everyone is as fortunate as they are growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. There are many people – families, children, and seniors that struggle everyday to make ends meet.”

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