Hunger Simulation Educates Students

Author: Caitlin Taylor

Imagine your name is Jorge. You come from the highlands of Guatemala where, although the civil war has ended, violence is still occurring. Your home, along with many others, was burned when the military suspected that there were Communists living in your village. You left for the city where the living conditions were terrible. You slept in huts made of cardboard, old car doors or anything you could find until a few years ago when you and your neighbors received a small loan to start a tiny carpentry workshop.
Jorge was only one of the hundreds of "global personalities" featured at The Oxfam Hunger Banquet that took place at Ross Dining Hall on Friday, March 11. The Banquet was advertised as a fundraiser for the sustainable hunger relief organization Heifer International. The dinner banquet aimed to "simulate the imbalance in food distribution in the world" in order to increase awareness and understanding of the pervasive problem of worldwide hunger today.
After contributing a suggested donation to Heifer International, each student picked, at random, a "global personality," which determined the income level of the student's personality, thus indicating the student's portion for the night. If a student picked a low-income personality, he or she was to sit on the small space of floor in the front of the dining hall, which soon became crowded with the majority of the students. A student who picked a middle-income personality was allowed to sit in one of the chairs lined up behind the floor space. The wealthiest income group, high-income, were placed at table-clothed tables complete with silverware, glasses and napkins - luxuries that the lower income groups could not afford. The meals consisted of a small portion of rice for the low-income students, rice and beans for the middle-income students and a healthy meal of salmon and side dishes for the high-income students. The proportions of different global income groups in the simulation added up to 60 percent of low-income groups, 25 percent middle-income and 15 percent high-income, which were meant to be representative of the actual percentages in the world today.
This Hunger Banquet was the second to occur at Middlebury. The student leader of the banquet, Sarah Lauing '07, explained, "I was inspired by last year's banquet but also saw places to improve it. By changing the venue, inviting community members, and adding more local examples, I hoped to make the banquet more applicable to Middlebury students."
The Hunger Banquet seemed to be a success, but Lauing hopes that it is merely the first sign of a larger outpouring of support. She explained, "While turnout was not as large as I had hoped, the students seemed to react well to the content of the banquet, and I'm hoping the symposium will just be the beginning of a larger response by the College community to the issues of hunger and poverty."
Middlebury will continue to increase awareness of global poverty and hunger through more events and activities on and around campus. Further events include an April 8 Benefit Concert by the Bluegrass Gospel Project, whose proceeds will also go to Heifer International and a food drive in April. Lauing also organized a letter-signing campaign outside the dining halls in January to call attention to the issue of global hunger. The Hunger Banquet coincided with the week-long Poverty Symposium and the Community Summit on Poverty, organized by Sarah Johnson in the Alliance for Civic Engagement - a conference for the community members to discuss and gain awareness of both the poverty and hunger issue.
The hunger banquet raised about $590 for Heifer International, an organization renowned for its innovative approach to hunger relief - they purchase livestock and send it to needy communities around the world while also giving the communities the resources to use the animals to create a sustainable lifestyle and help other needy communities. The ultimate goal is to raise $5000 to purchase a "Noah's Ark" for Heifer International - a package that includes two of every animal - a move that would represent an enormous contribution to the organization.