Oxfam provides opportunity to learn about world hunger

Waynesburg University hosted the Oxfam Hunger Banquet Wednesday,  Sept. 19. Oxfam is a charitable organization focused on helping with social issues, such as poverty and hunger around the world.

The purpose of the banquet is to inform and teach the student population about what part of the global population goes through on a daily basis.

“Oxfam is a global nonprofit organization that attempts to educate individuals about major social issues affecting the world, but then offering many solutions to those social issues,” said Kelly Hardie, assistant dean of Student Services. “We are focusing on three major topics: food insecurity, hunger and social inequality.”

Hardie  said the true purpose behind the banquet was intentionally kept secret .

“It’s supposed to be a mystery, and the reason behind that is because we don’t want the students to fully understand what they are getting themselves into,” said Hardie.

Students who attend are assigned a name, used to assign them into a social class: lower, middle or upper class. . Hardie said the purpose of this is to break down social inequality.

“[At the banquet,] the lower class within society are given water and rice to eat. The middle class is given water, beans and rice to eat and the upper class is given a three-course meal: salad, spaghetti and a desert,” Hardie said. .

Hardie, in conjunction with Oxfam, has has assisted with hunger banquets at Waynesburg before.

“Waynesburg University has a long history in hosting hunger banquets,” said Hardie. “I actually hosted my very first hunger banquet here about 10 years ago, and it went very well.”  

The banquet  helps teach about cultures many students learn about but might not experience, giving a good simulation of what many of them go through on a daily basis.

As the students entered the room on the day of the presentation,  Hardie met them at the door with a brown envelope, holding a small white paper that would soon dictate more than the students realized.

Each student picked out of the folder and were told to look up the name and number and learn about who they were going to be for the next hour. As students sat in the middle seats of the auditorium, Hardie started the presentation, reading off different scenarios to the students to help them realize the true nature of hunger problems around the world.

Hardie read off different scenarios to the students to help them realize the true nature of hunger problems around the world.

“One hundred people transfers to twenty people in high income, thirty people in the middle-income group and fifty people in the low-income group and that’s how the breakdown actually exists in the real world,” said Hardie.

At this point, there were a number of students, sitting on the floor, representing the low-income workers, only 10 or fewer  students sitting in middle class, and only four students representing the high-income class. As Hardie continued, she gave more stats to the students.

“More than 22.2 million people live in poverty,” said Hardie. “Nearly 795 thousand people suffer from chronic hunger. A child dies from malnutrition or a related preventable illness nearly every 10 seconds. That’s more than 8,000 children a day.”

As the presentation continued, Hardie told the students, depending on their income, how access to proper resources is essential.

“You may think hunger is about too many people and too little food,” said Hardie. “That is not the case. Our rich and bountiful planet produces enough to feed every women, man and child on earth. Hunger is about power. Its roots lie in inequality and access to resources. The results are literally poverty, war and the inability for families to grow or buy food.”

The students then reflected on their own situation and the situation that the roles they were playing taught them about what is going on in our world today. The Oxfam Hunger Banquet is a way for Waynesburg University to educate students on the problems our world is facing and talk about what they can do to change it. Hardie hopes this is an eye-opening experience for students and helps them better understand the hardships others go through on a daily basis.