The Colby Echo

Issue date: 4/29/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Tate Kaneshige

Over 100 million people who were once able to provide food for themselves recently lost that ability, and "joined the ranks of the hungry," according to a notice sent out by the Colby Volunteer Center (CVC) and LuziCare.

In order to bring this reality to light-a difficult task on a campus where dining halls often shut down at the end of the day with many pounds of food left uneaten or thrown away-CVC and LuziCare, an organization founded by Jamie Goldring '09 to fundraise for medical care in Malawi, Africa, partnered up to put on a "Hunger Banquet." The event itself was spearheaded by LuziCare members Megan "Petie" Booth '11, Sarah Ramsay '11 and John Perkins '11, who is also involved with CVC.

The banquet, held in the Lower Programming Space (LoPo) of Cotter Union on Thursday, April 23, divided students up into three separate groups. Upon entering the event, attendees received a number that correlated to one of the groups, each serving as a metaphor for a level of global resource availability.
Depending on their designated group, the students received a proportionate amount of food. The "top" 10 percent of banquet-goers received an abundant amount of food-a full meal-and were permitted to sit at tables, the "middle" 20 percent received just enough rice, beans and water, and sat in chairs while the bottom tier, consisting of 70 percent of the attendees, were given a meager amount of rice and water. They ate on the floor.

Before students were allowed to eat, however, cards relating stories from members of each of these real-world groups were distributed. The top echelon was allowed to eat earlier than the rest, and was provided with accounts of wealthier citizens who expected good nutrition and education for their children, whereas members of the lower groups learned about families whose primary concerns include the chance that their children may die of hunger.

"It was a really concrete way to educate people on hunger and food security," Goldring said.

After the meal, a presentation was given, outlining a number of statistics provided by Oxfam (a group dedicated to fighting poverty and hunger) regarding worldwide food consumption and allocation. Among the more powerful messages was that while 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger, globally, enough food is produced feed 12 billion people-approximately two times the global population.

Continued...

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