Peter Fish Ready to Return to Campus

October 13, 2005 == MEDIA ADVISORY

When a little orange fish reappears on the Calvin College campus on Monday,
October 17 it will be swimming in a somewhat bigger school than a year ago.

During the weeks between October 17 and November 7, the Social Justice
Coalition (SJC) at Calvin will spread awareness of world hunger and poverty
with a repeat of last year's Peter Fish Campaign, an effort which netted $6,300
for Bread for the World and the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
(CRWRC).

The SJC plans to pass out more Peter Fish - bright -orange, fish-shaped banks
- than it did last year. It is beginning with an initial supply of 500 fish,
but ultimately hopes to double that number.

"We're trying to get roughly a thousand flooding the campus," says Dave
Salverda, a Calvin senior philosophy major from Cambridge, Ont., who is a
co-leader of the SJC and works on world poverty and hunger initiatives.

The CRWRC has used the Peter Fish (inspired by the biblical story of the
apostle Peter using a coin taken from a fish's mouth to pay taxes) for years to
raise awareness of world hunger.

This year SJC members will deliver one Peter Fish per residence hall suite and
one fish per apartment in Calvin's on-campus housing. The filled fish will, as
last year, be collected at Calvin's Living Our Faith Together (LOFT) worship
service and at a collection site at Johnny's.

Also on Wednesday, October 19, the coalition is holding a sunrise-to-sunset
fast for students, faculty and staff in the Calvin community who wish to
participate. And on Thursday, October 20, Salverda will speak on "Issues of
Hunger," in the basement of Calvin's Bolt-Heyns-Timmer residence hall.

Finally, the SJC will also host a letter-writing campaign targeting a specific
case of world hunger. Salverda is considering directing the letters toward the
situation in Niger where almost 30 percent of the population (three million out
of 11 million people) is entering the starvation phase of hunger as a result of
severe famine.
 
For the complete story see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/peter_fish.htm

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Received on Thu Oct 13 14:00:43 2005