3.9.  Read the following two texts and say in what way they contrast with the information about the Third World countries you have learnt. Good Food Dustbin Guide

Two high school students from the Norwegian oil capital of Stavanger have recently completed a fortnight’s holiday living out of other people’s dustbins. They report that it was a very tasty gastronomic tour.

Torbjoern Groenning, 16, and Kolbjoern Opstad, 18, had planned to live as cheaply as possible. They travelled by bike with their fishing rods, intending to live off what they caught and wild berries, buying only strict essentials. They claim it was “just a coincidence” that led them to look into one of the dustbins by the roadside: “Before we went to fish for our supper on the first afternoon, we threw away some rubbish.”

Inside the dustbin near Helleland, they discovered four eggs, half a packet of paprika-flavoured crisps, four ham sandwiches, a tin of mackerel, two litres of skimmed sour milk, three different cheeses, one kilo of strawberries and an unopened can of Californian fruit salad. They also found a tube of sausage meat, half a kilo of margarine, a jar of plum jam and several loaves of bread.

The boys decided to turn their holiday into an investigative dustbin crawl. Their journey at the height of the tourist season took them from Stavanger, on Norway’s south-west coast, to Mandel, a resort 180 miles further south and their revelations have since shocked Norwegians into thinking about how much they waste.

On one occasion they discovered 20 freshly cooked crabs in a picnic site dustbin. They ate them with a fresh loaf and some mayonnaise found at the same spot. Budding experts on dustbin survival, they collected deposits on empty bottles to buy themselves fresh milk. And to celebrate their best haul of bottles, worth £2, they bought themselves soft drinks and cream cakes.

There was one recurring practical problem: the heat. Torbjoern explains: “We could feel the asphalt melting under our bikes. So we never touched food that was not well-wrapped. We preferred unopened things and submitted anything else to a strict smelling-test.”

Torbjoern and Kolbjoern are now active members of an ecological pressure group, called The Future in Your Hands, which claims 7,000 members and personalities such as Thor Heyerdahl and Gunnar Myrdal on its advisory board. The boys are already planning next year’s holiday. They are considering a dustbin tour of Europe – to find out how much other holiday-makers throw away.

Alex Finer (The Sunday Times)

3.10. Project. Work in groups of three or four. Imagine a rich woman has just died and left your committee £1 million to start a charity to help hungry people in the Third World. Plan your charity, making sure you cover all the points below.

1. Choose a country or countries to help.

2. Will you concentrate on certain sorts of projects? How will you decide which individual projects to support?

3. About how much of the £1 million will go on setting up your head office? How much on administration? How much on raising more money? How much on educating people in the West to help change government policies that hurt the Third World?

4. Of the money that goes directly as aid to the Third World, what percentage will be used for emergency relief and what percentage for long-term projects?

5. How many employees will your charity have?

6. Give your charity a name, and think of a motto for it.