Community Services Program

The Significance of World Hunger

The Thursday before Thanksgiving marked the annual Oxfam Hunger Banquet at UMass Dartmouth, which took place in the South Alcove.

Early in the day on November 17, members of the campus services staff, including Candace Sylvia, Norberta Vais and Pauline Moniz, as well as campus sound technicians, worked hard to set up the South Alcove with the appropriate atmosphere that helps to distinguish the Oxfam Hunger Banquet from other events that take place at UMass Dartmouth. Rotaract members and America Reads tutors,as well as Adrianne Schafer and Deirdre Healy completed finishing touches to this set-up from 5 to 6 p.m.

The interesting part about this event is that attendees get subjected to the very circumstances that they strive to learn about. As people signed in at the registration table starting around 6 p.m., they were told to reach in a box that was full of cards with various scenarios, respectively labeled low-income, middle-income or high-income.

Depending on the card that an attendee retrieved, there were three various ways that he or she was treated.

First, they would get ushered into the high-income section, if applicable, that included fancily decorated tables located scenically near the windows and only seated ten people – that is, two people to a table. The middle-income section, on the other hand, was parallel to the high-income tables and was not so extravagantly decorated, with five people to a table – not as intimate as the high-income section.

If an attendee pulled a low-income card, they were abruptly ordered to take a seat in the middle of the floor that was hastily strewn with news-paper. Much to the chagrin of the attendees, most people this night sat on the floor for two hours.

The reason for this differentiation of guests was to illustrate the proportion of people in the world who are, in fact, part of the low-income bracket, and are subject to live in poverty. The pervading reality is that such people subsist on an average of a $1 a day, and are thus hungry and starving.

“Welcome to the Oxfam Hunger Banquet”, read Master of Ceremonies and full-time visiting lecturer in the Education department at UMass Dartmouth, Laurie Lorant, at the onset of the event. “We are here today because 1.2 billion people live in poverty…  850 million people suffer from chronic hunger…

A child dies from hunger and other preventable diseases every 2.9 seconds.”