Storybowl kickoff
October 29th,2009
3:00Pm to 5:00Pm
Nigerian Mission at the UN 828 2nd Ave. 21st floor
THE CSVGC Universal Ethics
WORKING GROUP
PRESENTS
Opening our Hearts to Empathy through Story
This program sponsored by the Missions of Rwanda and Nigeria, uses story telling to demonstrate how empathy promotes effective and long-lasting reconciliation
Featuring:
Laura Simms, Internationally known Author and Storyteller,
Robert Reiser, Storyteller and author
Members of StoryBowl, a consortium of performers working to raise one million dollars to feed the hungry.
Invited Guests: HE Ambassador Joy Ogwu, Mission of Nigeria
Jacqueline Muerkatete representing the Mission of Rwanda
Moderators: Genie Kagawa, Universal Peace Federation and Martha Gallahue, The National Service Conference of the American Ethical Union
Mission:
As Storytellers we use stories to build bridges between people. We now call on performers around the world to hold events to raise public awareness and raise funds to feed the nearly one billion people who are in imminent danger of starvation.
Why Now?
The UN’s World Food Program estimates that close to a billion people are starving. In the aftermath of economic debacle, and crop failures due to droughts and floods, the UN believes that a world-wide famine is already on us, presenting the greatest threat to world stability in half a century. After all, what would anyone not do to save his or her starving child?
According to the WFP, a few billion dollars, far less than what was given to bail out CitiBank, could feed the world’s children and quite possibly prevent the next world war.
We encourage storytellers and performers everywhere to put together a local Story Bowl event and send the proceeds to the Oxfam, WFP, CARE or any of a dozen similar organizations and earmark the money to feed the starving.
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The Story Bowl "Story"
“Dad, how did you stop the war from happening?” The question hung in my mind halfway between sleep and waking…That morning the voice of the Deputy Director of the UN’s Word Food Project spoke from my radio. “Stop hunger and you stop war….
Between economic collapse and global warming, the world has not faced so much starvation since the 1930s…”
Now I was awake!
“Hunger begets fear, desperation, the rise of demagogues like Hitler. We are closer to a world war than we have been in sixty years…”
“Can’t the World Food Project help?” asked the commentator.
“We could … If we had the Two billion dollars that the wealthier countries can’t give this year.”
I sat upright. The day before GM and Chrysler and a dozen banks received a hundred times that amount.
In that moment StoryBowl was born.
Storytellers don’t have two billion dollars, but we have voices; we have audiences! We are troubadours! We sound the alarm. Why not hold a hundred concerts in a hundred cities around the world!? In ten dollar and twenty dollar donations, people will give that money to the World Food Project!
Two years ago we raised money for Tsunami Relief. We could do it now! Before the catastrophe!
“Dad, how did you stop the war from happening?”
“I told stories, my friends told stories, a thousand stories till the bowl was full and every child had enough to eat!”
