In collaboration with Key Club, Paly’s Christian Club is coordinating a 30-hour famine to take place Friday, May 18.

Thirty-hour Famine is an international youth movement to fight hunger, which currently afflicts 852 million people across the world. According to the 30 Hour Famine website (http://www.30hourfamine.org/), 10.5 million children under the age of five die from disease and malnutrition as a result of hunger every year. Similar statistics reveal that 29,000 young children die every day from hunger and that every three seconds a child dies because he/she was malnourished or susceptible to disease.

“I really just hope that people will just understand the extent of their [African children] suffering,” said Christian Club president Paula Wu. “It’s so easy to just forget about the issue. Statistics can be numbing…we want people to feel empathetic on an emotional level.”

Key Club members had originally planned on joining Gunn’s Fast for Awareness, scheduled for May 25, but when they found out that it was against the rules, decided to host the event in partnership with Christian Club. Although the Christian Club is a co-sponsor of the famine, the event has no religious affiliation.

“It doesn’t matter what faith you are, we’re trying to unite everyone in the battle against the prolific issue of world hunger,” Wu said.

The purpose of the event is to promote awareness, raise funds to benefit malnourished children in Africa, and give the participants a firsthand account of the acute food crisis. All proceeds will be donated to World Vision and will go towards providing water, sanitation, health and nutrition assistance as well as emergency food and farming assistance for citizens in Africa.

“Living in America, it’s so easy for me to slip into this general complacency,” Wu said. “That’s why this famine will help people understand how deplorable hunger really is.”

The fast is set to begin at 12 a.m. on Friday morning and last till Saturday morning at 6 a.m. Participants are supposed to abstain from food, but are allowed to consume water and fruit juice. The organizers of the event initially planned the famine as an overnight retreat, but were unable to carry out these plans because of a lack of adult chaperones.

Instead, the 65 participants who have signed up thus far will congregate in the Student Center between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday after school to partake in activities that are designed so they can immerse themselves in the experience. These activities include playing icebreakers, soliciting donations around the neighborhood, and watching informative videos.

“Hunger is 100 percent preventable,” Wu said. “All it takes is to get people to care and do something about it.”

Many participants also plan on attending the movie showing of Blood Diamond, hosted by Paly’s Model United Nations club, which will take place at 7 p.m. in the SSRC.

“I feel that none of what I worry about is actually important,” Wu said. “We’re all just working for good grades, when starving Africans are fighting for their survival.”