As a child, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where I knew there would always be food on the table, but for so many others, access to food each day is not guaranteed. I was quickly reminded of this disparity upon entering STM’s Dining Hall to take part in the Hunger Banquet.
A Hunger Banquet is an interactive activity simulating the imbalanced distribution of food in our world and is determined by the luck of the draw. Attendees were instructed to choose a slip of paper at random, placing each individual into the high, middle or low-income group. Some were born into relative prosperity and others into poverty. Those at the high-income table enjoyed a quality Italian dinner at a formal table setting, while those in the middle-income group ate a modest meal of rice and beans and those in the low-income population were offered only rice to eat while sitting in a group of chairs with no tables. I was taken aback by the statistics that were shared during the evening: Two-and-a-half-billion people live in poverty and over nine hundred and twenty-five million suffer from chronic hunger. Being placed into the low-income group, and only offered rice, I joined fifty percent of the world’s population, earning a couple of dollars a day. As I ate, I struggled to imagine a day that is consumed by finding food, water and shelter.
The unfortunate truth is that there are people going hungry every day and the solution to end world hunger is not going to arise overnight. Efforts such as soup kitchens and food banks are helping, but the distribution of resources remains imbalanced. Although the circumstances into which we are born may be out of our control, how we deal with what we are given directly relates to the current state of our world. We can find peace and hope in the fact that our earth has the sustenance to feed every human being. Those of us who enjoy full stomachs have a responsibility to make this happen—because those who are hungry deserve to be fed.
