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Campus groups band together to teach students the meaning of hunger

By J. Astra Brinkmann

Posted on Feb. 12, 2007, at 12:00 a.m.

If you leave the Coe Room Tuesday evening with an empty stomach, yours won’t be the only hunger unfulfilled. As part of Human Rights Awareness week, Pi Beta Phi, Catholic Campus Ministry and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship have collaborated to address the issue of famine through a role-playing technique called a hunger banquet.

Human Rights Awareness Week Committee member Tiffany Warzecha explained that participants would engage in a simulation showing the discrepancies between the most and the least privileged people around the world. Each person will be randomly assigned a global class situation and their quantity and variety of food will vary depending upon the role designated to them.

Warzecha and Vice President of Philanthropy of Pi Beta Phi Jen Pickering agree that the most important result of this project will be to raise awareness on the campus.

“We’re hoping to start dialogue with people afterwards – to let them know that it’s okay to talk about it,” said Warzecha, who added that multiple speakers will be present to propose ideas for how best to take action.

“It’s so shocking that there are 850 million people that go without food and how little money it would take to give more to poor countries,” Pickering said.

While Warzecha said that there have been hunger banquets on the University of Maine campus before, this one is unique in that it fuses the passionate concerns held by multiple community members.

Jen Pickering said that the inspiration came from one of her sisters discussing the possibility of holding a hunger banquet in class, only to find that other people were thinking the same thing – thus the agreement to collaborate.

Pickering said that the process for much of the simulation procedure can be found on Web sites like http://www.oxfam.org.uk or http://www.unicef.org, which are global organizations catering to the issue of world hunger. The focus of information to be given at the UMaine hunger banquet, however, will be tailored to more local needs, but the overreaching global aspect will be acknowledged as well.

“There will be empty seats showing that the world doesn’t make enough food for everyone. Some people just don’t get any,” Pickering said.

The Human Rights Awareness Week hunger banquet will be held at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 13 in the Coe Room.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.