By Santi Elbow
Edgewood College hosted a hunger banquet on Nov. 18 to spread awareness and demonstrate how world hunger and poverty affects all social classes.
Katie Lange, a freshman at Edgewood and one of the organizers of this event, said that hunger banquets “are interactive events in the way poverty and wealth and the distribution of food, wealth and healthcare impact everyone around the world in various societies and nations.”
The college borrowed the script of Oxfam, another organization that performs hunger banquets. More information on this process can be found at https://www.oxfamamerica.org/take-action/events/.
Participants were placed in three social classes. Leonard explained the class divide: “While a few people have a feast (10%), several people (30%) get bread or tortilla chips and bean dips (hummus or frijoles), and the majority (60%) share a few loaves of unleavened flatbread.”
According to Lange, events like hunger banquets are important because “countries like America do not recycle or compost their food and even overconsume.”
“In order to lower poverty and world hunger, we need to look out for our fellow man and help others if we live in the top 15% and have the economic power to do so,” she said.
She hopes that those who went through the hunger banquet simulation will reflect on ways to lower world hunger and start by making a difference in the Edgewood community.
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