Danika Warkentin shows passion for public speaking and the peace-building significance that food possesses with her speech titled, Join the Feast.
Third-year Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies student, Danika Warkentin is this year's winner of the bi-national C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest.
This contest happens every year and it allows students from all Mennonite and Brethren in Christ colleges in both the United States and Canada to compete in a contest. Contestants are to write about contemporary Christian topics surrounding the position of peace.
Warkentin first heard of the contest from her Biblical Perspectives on Peace and Justice professor, Sheila Klassen-Wiebe. The speech was originally assigned as part of the course curriculum but doubled as an entry into the contest if students were interested.
"I presented it to the class and all of my classmates gave me written feedback on it," says Warkentin. "The professor gave me written feedback on it and then I talked to David Balzer to do some last-minute touch-ups and then that's the point where I presented it in front of the forum and then it went on to the binational, which I won."
She presented her speech on March 25, 2022, in the Great Hall on CMU's north campus.
Join the Feast centres on how food has the capacity to be a tool used for peace-building. It looks at the significance of food found in the book of Luke, and how it's critical for the ministry.
"Two main reasons that it can be a peacemaker are that food fulfills a basic need, which kind of has a sense of bringing all of humanity together on one level, which means it can connect people very effectively. The second is that I believe that food is sacred. Not everybody does, but I believe that food is sacred and it connects us to the divine, and that's another reason that it can be a tool for peace."
The CMU student also notes how food can be used for violence as well, emphasizing just how much power food holds. It has the ability to connect and disconnect people. Warkentin uses food sovereignty issues as an example.
If there is one thing that people take from her speech, Warkentin says that she hopes people understand the importance of simple things such as food and the difference they can make.
"It's important to take the day-to-day aspects of your life and just see how they can point you towards God, towards relationship and towards peace building."
Food as a Connector
Warkentin's family lived in Burkina Faso, West Africa for six years, from with she was four to nine-years-old.
According to her, it was widely accepted and common for people who were eating to invite those passing by to stop for some food. This is something she experienced when her family returned there for a family trip, they were on their way to the marketplace when a man, who was eating in his courtyard, waved them over.
After engaging in conversation with the man he said, "Vous est invité" which means "you are invited."
It was this interaction that drives Warkentin's speech to talk about living in abundance and how food is used as a connector between people.
"He had faith that his plate of rice would be sufficient for the five of us to share. He had faith that tomorrow if he was hungry and had no food, someone might share with him. Now that's feasting," says Warkentin in her speech.
Once in a Lifetime Opportunity
After winning the bi-national C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest, Warkentin received funding to allow her to attend any peace conference of her choice. She decided to go to "The Real Path to peace in Ukraine: Negotiations, YES! Escalation, NO!" conference in New York City, N.Y.
"That was an incredible experience for me too. It was situated right at the UN headquarters right across the street at a church center where a group of women decided that it would be good to have a moral voice speaking into the decisions of the UN. So we got speakers in from on-the-ground conflicts like Myanmar, and Ukraine, of course, and all sorts of different places kind of talking about what it means to be a peace builder and how to navigate your peace stance within a context that really challenges it sometimes and challenge whether responding in violence is actually a bad thing or whether it's necessary."
Warkentin also had the opportunity to talk to the UN ambassador for Albania who sits on the Security Council.
Click below to watch Warkentin present her award-winning speech.
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