Kids Can Make A Difference
Larry Levine
Kids Can
Make A Difference is an innovative educational program
originally designed for middle school and high school
students that now is used by elementary school teachers
and in undergraduate and graduate programs. It helps them
understand the root causes of hunger and poverty and how
they as individuals can take action.
We live
in challenging times. Therefore, KIDS encourages students
to ask the question "why." And that question should be
asked over and over until they get an answer that to them
feels like the deep truth. For example in discussing
hunger, some of the questions might be, "Why are people
hungry? Why do people die from hunger and disease caused
by malnutrition?" We encourage students not to accept the
easy answer which is, "Because they don't have food." We
hope that when they ask deeper and deeper questions, they
will realize that a big part of the reason is that too
many people have taken more than their share of the
Earth’s resources for too many years.
KIDS is
entering its 11th year. Our teacher guide is used in over
4,000 classrooms world wide. We are a self funded program
of World Hunger Year and our entire unpaid staff consists
of my wife Jane, me and a whole bunch of dedicated people
who contribute to the program through individual
contributions, purchase of our teacher guide, writing
articles for the newsletter, and providing their energy
and guidance.
Instead
of hearing anymore words from me, let's watch a video
demonstrating the outcomes of the program.
DESCRIPTION OF KIDS VIDEO
This brief video is dived into four segments:
-
Segment 1 shows program in its formative stages before
the teacher guide was published and when we visited
classrooms and taught a series of classes. The class
shown is seventh grade.
-
Segments 2 & 3 took place after the publication of the
teacher guide. The 5th and 6th
grade classes shown are from two different schools.
Their teachers worked together to conduct lessons and
students chose to put on a hunger fair.
- The
final segment demonstrates what a creative teacher and
her students developed after using the teacher guide for
an entire school year. The students did all the work on
the weekends. Everything but the actual taping was done
by the class. The cable station in their area ran the
finished product for years as a PSA.
Larry Levine (kids@kidscanmakeadifference.org)
is co-founder of Kids Can Make A Difference (KIDS).
