Perhaps the $50 in birthday money that Jonathan Harkey donated will feed a boy in Haiti, where the average annual per capita income is $1,900.

Maybe the $360.14 that Jonathan Noa raised by playing guitar in the North Gwinnett High School parking lot after school for three weeks will become a year's worth of meals and new hope for a girl in Malawi, where the average life expectancy is 43 years.

Ken Sugiura/AJC (ENLARGE)

Krissy Anderson, a member of the Sugarloaf United Methodist Church youth group in Duluth, applies adhesive notes to a wall at the church. Anderson participated in the 30 Hour Famine, a nationwide event for teens to raise money to fight global hunger. Anderson and other students were applying 29,000 yellow notes to represent the number of children who die daily from preventable diseases.

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This weekend in Gwinnett County, where hunger generally means having missed lunch, teenagers are grappling with the notion of real hunger and how they can help solve it.

The two Jonathans were among about 140 youth members of Duluth's Sugarloaf United Methodist Church who participated in the 30 Hour Famine, a nationwide event held to raise money to fight hunger.

Students pledge to go without food for 30 hours — most also perform community service and learn more about world hunger — to raise money. World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization coordinating the event, estimates 852 million people are hungry.

"We try to get them thinking about the world," said Aaron Young, director of student life ministries at the Duluth church.

Early Friday evening, Young and a handful of students helped set up their church's program as others hung out in the youth ministries building. Other students, mostly members of the North Gwinnett and Peachtree Ridge high school clusters, played foosball or talked with friends.

The drizzle threatened one of the program's plans — to sleep in the church parking lot in cardboard boxes to simulate life as a homeless person.

Still, students were to become "families" and spend the evening following a story in which they might lose their jobs, face eviction or try to find a place to stay for the evening — "so hopefully, the next time they see someone homeless, they'll have some empathy," Young said.

Saturday, the teens will take a guided audio tour to learn about children living with AIDS in Africa; spend time at "prayer stations" where they learn about and pray for the less fortunate; and be dispatched to a variety of service projects.

Some will sort donated medical supplies that will go to clinics around the world. Others will prepare meals for HIV and AIDS patients or clean up a Gwinnett home for foster children.

"The goal is that it wouldn't be once a year," Young said, "but that they start to see that they can make a difference all year 'round, not just through their money but through their time."

About 500,000 students across the country are expected to participate, including roughly 2,900 students in about 110 groups in metro Atlanta, many in Gwinnett.

World Vision hopes to raise $12.5 million this year. The organization, which has raised more than $100 million in the 30 Hour Famine's 16 years, said Sugarloaf United Methodist last year collected more than $26,000, making it one of the top 30 fund-raising groups nationwide.

Jacob Harkey, Jonathan's older brother, was among those contributing.

Two summers ago, his eyes were opened when he, Young and two other students from the church went to Uganda to see firsthand where their money was going.

He called the trip "one of the greatest experiences of my life" and said it has caused him to consider a career in photojournalism to tell poverty's story to the world. More immediately, he has been led to volunteer at soup kitchens and Sheltering Arms, a nonprofit child care provider.

Jacob Harkey appreciated the 30 Hour Famine event because it allowed him time "to kind of think about how I can help people in the world who don't have as much as me.... It just kind of broadens your horizon of what the world's like, not just the suburban lifestyle."