Organise a HUNGER BANQUET
Our planet produces enough food to feed every woman, man, and child - with some left over. The problem is that the food does not reach everybody who needs it. And we're not talking here only about those who go hungry as a result of drought or conflict, but about people who are just too poor to buy enough food to keep them alive and healthy.
Children are particularly at risk. Malnutrition stunts their physical and mental development and makes them more prone to disease.
Millennium Development Goal No. 1 is to halve the number of people who are suffering poverty and hunger by 2015.
But if hunger is not really about an overall shortage of food, but about its unequal distribution, we should be able to do much better than that. We should be able to abolish malnutrition altogether.
...experience life's lottery
Take Action
Organise a Hunger Banquet. Find out how to do this from Oxfam America's Hunger Banquet website: www.hungerbanquet.org
You can use a Hunger Banquet to discuss issues of [poverty, inequality and huger in the world today. You can also use it to raise money to fight global poverty. But make sure the rich pay more!
How to organise a Hunger Banquet
Invite a group of people to dinner. Each person attending is randomly assigned a role:
15% of the people are in the high-income group; they sit at a table and will enjoy a three-course meal.
25% of the people are in the middle-income group; they sit on chairs and will eat rice and beans (which are delicious and nutritious).
The remaining 60% are the world's poor; they will sit on the floor, and get only rice and water. They will be suffering the fate of the billions of poor people throughout the world who are undernourished and go to bed hungry each night.
Find Out More
Oxfam America's Hunger Banquet website gives you a chance to learn about hunger from the point of view of those who experience it every day:
Loria Narua is surviving on the edge
It wouldn't take much for her life to fall apart. She lives in Mozambique, where she grows crops on a small plot of land called a mashamba. It's not much, but most years she can produce enough maize, groundnuts, eggplant, carrots, and kale to feed three children. She even owns a few chickens.
Unfortunately, she doesn't earn enough to send her children to school. Her oldest, Eduardo, is nine years old and desperate to learn how to read and write. She'd do anything to educate him, but simply can't afford it. Besides, this year, she'll need his help in the field. It's October - time to bring in the maize. Last year, her husband gathered the harvest with her, but he died in the spring. People say it could have been AIDS, but she can't be sure. She misses her husband - now more than ever.
As she looks forward to the harvest, she's worried. The rains were not good this year. This could make for a tough year to come...
Sign up to our Newsletter:
Email Friends
Next time you have people come to dinner, why not make it a Hunger Banquet? It will be a dinner party with a difference.
Find out how to do this from Oxfam America's Hunger Banquet website: www.hungerbanquet.org
