December 5, 2006

Mai Trinh ’09 coordinated the Hunger and Poverty Awareness week, with Dr. Kathy Rowell (Sociology) and Molly Ritchie (Community Service Office). Two events were held during the week of Nov. 13-17: "Imagine a Night without a Home" and the Hunger Banquet. 

For "Imagine a Night without a Home", tables were set up in the basement of the Student Center where different groups (such as Habitat for Humanity, STAND, Springfield groups such as the Arks, and OXFAM America) came tabling about their organizations, hunger and poverty  facts, and what students can do to help. After that, some people slept in boxes outside of the student center just to get the "feelings" of what poverty is like. It turned out really well; a lot of students and people from the community participated. 

The Hunger Banquet was organized as a metaphor for how food and other resources are inequitably distributed in the world, and thus attempted to give people a personal sense of hunger and poverty.

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