March: Why its the Best Month of the Year

We’re here. We’ve made it! The date is March 1st, and I am pumped to celebrate the next 31 days of the best month of the year.  March is simply the best when you compare it to all other months there is no competition:

January– You’ve already failed your new year resolution

February– It’s still freezing

March– LET’S GO!!!!!!!

April- You’re still in school

May- Cinco De Mayo is not a real holiday

June- Overrated!

July- There are typically 20000 firework accidents in July

August- Summer is ending, it is time to come to terms with it.

September- Ask Green Day

October- It’s coming the four months of freezing, its right around the corner

November- Not even Thanksgiving can make up for the first 30 days of cold

December- Santa is a creep

 

1. March Madness

“ONIONS!”

“Watford for the Win!”

“Jenkins for the Championship”

“It’s a circus!”

“Jordan Poole! He got it!”

“OHHHHHH OHHHHH UNBELIEVABLE”

I’m getting goosebumps writing about the ultimate tournament in all of sports. 68 teams, 67 games, 6 rounds, 1 champion, and countless amounts of unforgettable, miraculous moments.  It’s been my favorite three weeks of the year since I fell in love with basketball in the 5th grade. There are so many memories upsets like Lehigh beating the mighty Duke, VCU or Loyola making runs to the final four, or men becoming timeless legends: Shabazz Napier, Carmelo Anthony, Tyler Zeller, Tyler Hansbrough, Grayson Allen, Jerian Grant, Clayton Custer, Karl-Anthony Towns. What other sport can a three-week stretch turn no ones into celebrities? What other sporting events could make a ninety plus-year-old nun a house-hold name?  March Madness is more than a celebration of basketball, its a celebration of hope. From the players to the fans, to the people who know nothing about basketball the NCAA Tourney is full of hope. Anyone can fill out a bracket, any player can make a name for itself, and any team can make a run. On all levels, there is hope, heck a 16 seed, a tiny school from south Baltimore beat the number 1 seed ACC Champion two years ago in the first round. Anything is possible in the tournament hope is everywhere in March. 

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Hope is dead in March 2020

2. Springbreak

Winter break you celebrate holidays with your family.  The summer break is three months spent with your friends.  Fall break does not exist, however, Thanksgiving is probably the most underrated holiday.  Spring break is the best because there are no obligations. Spring break disregards holidays, does not require family, and is not reliant on friends.  Spring break is an entire week, as the weather gets warmer for you to do whatever you can think of. If you want to travel, you can. If you want to play sports you can.  If you want to sleep in until 3 pm, eat nothing but Mac-n-cheese, and gain 20 pounds in a week, you can. Spring break is your break! Do whatever you want to do it’s your time no one else’s.  March has an entire week dedicated to you, what another month can say that?

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Spring Break 2020 you trapped in your home 

 

3. St Patricks Day

An entire holiday dedicated to an Irish culture primarily associated gingers, drinking, kilts, bagpipes, four-leaf clovers, and the color green. Sign me up!  City parades are legendary, the drinking is relentless, the music is spontaneous, and everyone is in their best mood on St Patricks Day. Don’t let me forget the pleasure of eating warm corn beef and cabbage with the family.  St Patricks Day is a quality party. 

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Party was canceled in 2020

4. Spring Weather

Look it’s a bird! It’s a plane! No no its the SUN! Finally!!!!!!! For the first time in what feels like forever March brings out the sun, accompanied by beautiful 50 degree temperatures and a nice breeze.  Enjoy wiping the dust off your bikes, skateboards, and roller skates. Get your friends together and plays some games. Kick-the-can, basketball, soccer, football, if its march you can play it. Go on a hike! There is no snow stopping you!  Enjoy the weather ladies and gentlemen it’s the first days of warmth, more is to come.

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Enjoy the indoors as it gets warmer in March 2020

 

My thoughts on March 2020:

 

The NCAA Tournament has been canceled along with Spring break plans, and St Patricks Day parades.  We have been told to quarantine indoors and avoid spreading the Coronavirus. March 2020 represents the most unfortunate month because it is unbelievably unfortunate timing.  If all this Coronavirus chaos was over November- February, it would still suck, but like we still have March Madness, we still have St Paty’s day, we still have a spring break.  This month, right now, just proves the fact. March is the greatest month, its a shame it’s being taken away.  

 

Feed My Starving Children: Taking Advantage of Service

 

I believe that helping others is one of the most gratifying sources of joy.  Over the summer I go on a week-long service trip with my church, I volunteer at Dupage Pads to help the homeless, and I help church retreats for junior-high through sophomores over the course of the year.  The satisfaction and pride that comes from serving are second to none, and people at Feed My Starving Children know this all too well. According to the 2017- 2018 Feed My Starving Children Annual report more than 333,000,000 bags of meals were packed and sent to a variety of third world countries dealing with starvation.  Feed My Starving Children takes a lot of pride in saying how it is 100 percent packed by volunteers, and how none of their work would be possible without the community. Feed My Starving Children understands how helping others makes one feel, they take advantage of it, rely on it, and have used it to take advantage of people for the last thirty years. 

 

The Cycle of Poverty

I have been to Feed My Starving Children twice over the last year, both times with my basketball team as a form of service, and both times they talked about “ending the cycle of poverty” explaining how 12.9 million people in the world are undernourished.  They proclaim that it is their goal to get that number down 0, how there is no reason that the world should have so many people going hungry. What they fail to mention is what happens if they succeed in achieving their “goal”. They would close their doors, shut down, and the business model will be obsolete.  They know that with their help of providing food, their doors will remain open for years to come. They may say their goal is to end hunger, and the volunteers who are leading the groups may truly believe that the company spends over 3 million dollars on their administrator’s salaries, there is no way that the people at the top want their business to fail. 

 

Why is starvation not improving?

 

Let’s take a look at one Feed My Starving Children’s main destinations: Haiti

 As US president in the 1990s, Bill Clinton lobbied for US foreign Aid to send all the leftover rice from the American farmers’ surplus to Haiti.  Theoretically, it would be a solution to both an economic issue in America and the starvation problem in Haiti. The policy completely ruined Haiti’s already poor economy.  Haiti, a developing country, used its farmers and agriculture as a backbone to their economy. What is the number one crop grown in Haiti? You probably already guessed, the free rice coming in from America dropped the rice price all the way down to practically nothing.  Domestic markets crashed, farmers lost their jobs, moved their families to cities like Port-au-Prince, which overpopulated its streets. With Haitian cities overpopulated and an economy dependent on US donations, turmoil comes to a tragic climax when Haiti a nation at risk of both earthquakes and hurricanes experiences natural disasters.  Such natural disasters kill the homeless, displace resources, and lead to more American NGOs and foreign aid to come in and rebuild slums, that are only strong enough to stand until the next disaster. All these years later American aid is still making major impacts in Haiti for all the wrong reasons, Feed My Starving Children, and other providing organizations continue to damage the foreign nation’s domestic economy and the cycle of poverty in Haiti keeps spinning.

 

The African Lie

 

In the mid-eighties, with the “Feed the World” campaign, worldwide starvation became a major issue at the forefront of culture.  There were several charitable events such as “live aid” which raised over 127 million dollars for famine relief in Africa. Around the world, people were donating money, resources, and time, in order to help solve starvation in third world countries.  For all the donations, all the food, and all the volunteers the work was courageous, important, however, all these years later it is clear they made no significant impact, as in 1990 according to the UN, over a billion people were still struggling with starvation.  

One of the major issues within the foreign aid industry is propaganda.  We hear songs like Feed the World, see pictures of African children starving, and we immediately want to help.  Donating our resources to them may be a short term solution, however, it is clear that over time we have formulated an image of what Africa is…

“There’s a world outside your window, and it’s a world of dread and fear

Where a kiss of love can kill you, and there’s death in every tear…

 

A song of hope where there’s no hope tonight, ooh

Why is coming first deadly feared?

Why is to touch to be scared?”  

 

Those are some of the actual lyrics to feed the world.  I hate to break to everyone, but Africa and its people are no so different than us.  I hope this does not surprise anyone, but I think that the image we have of the entire continent is unbelievably ignorant and out of touch.  We Americans see all African’s as poor, sick, underdeveloped, and while this may be somewhat true about many parts of Africa, they are people all the same.  African’s are just as capable of lifting themselves out of poverty as anyone else, they just need the resources to do it, and need foreign countries to stop taking advantage of them by creating a system of dependency. 

 

Feed My Starving Children Labor

So I have addressed how providing food to foreign nations damages their economy, but there is another aspect to Feed My Starving Children I have recently come to realize.  What do you do when you’re at Feed My Starving Children? You scoop, rice soy, spices into a bag, another person closes the bag, weighs it and puts it in the box, while a warehouse crew packs up the boxes, and provides enough of the food for all groups to continue working.  Scoop, scoop, scoop, bag after bag after bag, box after box after box, it’s pretty simple, so simple it could be EASILY automated. An automated system would make donating the food exponentially more efficient a Feed My Starving Children could run 247 providing their donations, why don’t they? Again the answer is money, they rely on people’s donations, and volunteers provide donations if they automated they would be more successful in their goal of delivering food but would be less successful in turning a profit.  They take advantage of free labor, hoping you help them continue their ineffective ways so they can proudly say they are ‘making a difference’ as their bank account increases.  

What should we do?

So you have been to Feed My Starving Children before and you had a great experience.  You are like anyone else and find joy in helping others, what should you do as a better means of helping end the cycle of poverty?  The answer is simple, take a look at the world around you, your home town, your state, your community. In order to make an actual difference in people’s lives help those around you, volunteer at homeless shelters, volunteer your time facilities, think global act locally.  There are many problems in our world and international affairs are very complicated. While you may think that sending that bag of rice feeds a child, you must think… to what end? Volunteering locally combats the cycle of poverty by making a difference in those around you while letting foreign nations dig themselves out of the cycle by empowering themselves.  

Sources:

 

“Charity Navigator – Rating For Feed My Starving Children”. Charity Navigator, 2020, https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=9307. Accessed 2 Mar 2020.

 

“Financial Accountability : Feed My Starving Children”. Fmsc.Org, 2020, https://www.fmsc.org/about-us/financial-accountability. Accessed 2 Mar 2020.

 

“Misplaced Charity”. The Economist, 2016, https://www.economist.com/international/2016/06/11/misplaced-charity. Accessed 2 Mar 2020.

 

Lyrics, Slade. “Slade – Do They Know It’s Christmas (Feed The World) Lyrics | Azlyrics.Com”. Azlyrics.Com, 2020, https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/slade/dotheyknowitschristmasfeedtheworld.html. Accessed 2 Mar 2020.