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Students at Bishop Maginn High School in Albany say they'll think twice next time they start to throw away food.

They were moved by a talk last week by Thomas Awiapo, a Catholic Relief Services global solidarity coordinator who recently visited the Albany Diocese to deliver a series of presentations on his upbringing in a small Ghanaian village.

Catholic Relief Services is the U.S. bishops' overseas relief and development agency, serving the poorest people in approximately 100 countries worldwide.

Having lost his parents at a young age and lived in extreme poverty, Mr. Awiapo told the Maginn students, "I'm happy to be alive.

"I still miss my parents," he added.

The CRS speaker recalled his childhood, including the fact that, of his three brothers, two died of starvation and one ran away from their village. One of Mr. Awiapo's brothers passed away while lying on his lap.

Now, Mr. Awiapo is married with four children of his own, back home in Ghana.

Boyhood
He said his life began to turn around when Catholic Relief Services came to his town, building a school and offering small snacks to children who attended. "They tricked us into going to school," Mr. Awiapo told his audience. "I loved that snack, but I still hated school."

At the school, the class would cheer for whoever received the highest score and boo for whoever had the lowest. After receiving too many boos, Mr. Awiapo was taken under a teacher's wing.

Better grades helped the young boy enjoy school more. After a while, the snack became insignificant; Mr. Awiapo said he would have gone to class even without that cup of Cream of Wheat.

Snacks at the school were paid for with money raised through Catholic Relief Services' annual "Rice Bowl" campaign. The paper bowls are filled with spare change during Lent to help support children in need.

Mr. Awiapo is a living testament of that. He was supported by clergy members through high school and college, eventually receiving scholarships to attend California State University, where he earned a master's degree.

Maginn reaction
Leasia Austin, a senior at Bishop Maginn, said she was inspired by Mr. Awiapo. "Little things go a long way," she remarked.

For junior Isaiah Johnson, a parishioner of Blessed Sacrament in Albany, Mr. Awiapo's speech at Maginn was a wakeup call.

"I had no idea," he said. "Last year, I didn't do a lot for the Rice Bowl. This year I'll do it for sure."

Mr. Awiapo noted that the point of the Rice Bowl campagn isn't just to raise money; it also creates solidarity and understanding between those who are giving and those who are in need.

"There is another world out there where people walk five miles to school," he told The Evangelist. "You've got to expose [American students] to the world," he continued, saying that many students complain they don't like particular foods, or even that their internet connection is too slow. He said he enjoys being able to show teens how people in other countries live.

For the past 17 years, Mr. Awiapo has worked for Catholic Relief Services, spreading the word about the organization that saved his life. He believes that if CRS' school had not fed him all those years ago, he very likely could have died, just like his brothers.

Hearing that "makes you realize just how much you have," Leasia told The Evangelist.

'Ageless'
When a student asked how old Mr. Awiapo was when CRS came to his village, he admitted that he wasn't sure; he had no birth certificate. He told the students that, when it came time for him to get a passport, he was forced to pick a birthdate.

He chose June 15, 1969: the middle of the year and the middle of the month. As for a birth year, Mr. Awiapo put three choices in a hat and chose one randomly.

"People ask me what I celebrate for my birthday," he told the crowd. "I say, 'I celebrate life.' It keeps me young. When people ask me, I say I'm ageless."

The Maginn students presented the speaker with a check for $250, raised during a recent dress-down day, to help support CRS' hurricane relief work in Haiti.

After Mr. Awiapo spoke at Bishop Maginn, he headed to St. Thomas the Apostle School in Delmar to tell his story again.[[In-content Ad]]

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