Diversity Week banquet sheds light on connections between hunger, poverty

09/24/08 - As a part of Diversity Week, Director of the Feinstein Hunger Center Kathleen Gorman organized an interactive presentation on Hunger and Poverty in the Multicultural Center. The presentation was designed by Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization that deals with issues of hunger, injustice and poverty in more than 120 countries around the world. When first arriving at the hunger banquet, participants chose a colored card out of a basket. The selection is at random, but one can soon find that the color they choose defines where and what they will be eating at the "banquet."

Once the attendees picked up their cards, they were told to read their new name, level of income and a little bit about their new selves.

For example, one attendee became "Michelle," a 50-year-old Haitian woman who worked hard so her children could eat each day. "Michelle's" husband was off working in another town because of lack of employment options in the Haitian village, and she and her kids missed him.

Low-income people were told to sit on the floor in the back, while middle-class people were given chairs in front of the lower-class people. The upper-class sat at a round table in the front of the room.

Some students shared their stories about their new personas and how they lived in their assigned class systems. Gorman then showed a film depicting images of malnourished people, and noted "850 million people suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition."

The film also shed light on the "30,000 children under the age of five [that] die from mostly preventable causes, including malnutrition."

After watching the video on the facts of hunger, it was time to dine.

URI Dining Services provided the upper-class people with fruit salad, a garden salad, some pasta and dessert. The middle-class people picked up their simple, one-course meals, and the lower-income people, waited in line for rice and water. The meal was not something the low-income students relished, but Gorman said they were lucky to not have to "walk for five to 10 miles to get water," as was common for many people in the lower-income category.

After the meal, the participants were asked how they felt about the exercise. One member of the lower-income group said that she had an "inherent anger" toward the higher-income group. She was also concerned that few people who came over from the high-income table to share a little of their food were doing so out of guilt or pity, rather than the sense of responsibility that they should have felt.

One member of the higher-income group defended herself on the matter, but others said that they did feel uncomfortable eating the good food while there were so many other people watching them and wishing they had more.

Gorman said "one child [dies] every 2.9 seconds" of mostly preventable causes involving hunger. To bring it a little closer to home, she said "In 2006, Rhode Island had the second highest child poverty rate in New England (15.1%) - One out of every six children in Rhode Island lives in poverty" and "approximately one out or eight Rhode Island households are food insecure.