This event is being co-sponsored by MassPIRG, Hillel Tzedek, UMass Red Cross Club, the Muslim Student Association and students from the UMass Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management. Earthfoods Café, a UMass non-profit student-run business, will cater the food.
The model for this initiative is the Oxfam Hunger Banquet, a program started 30 years ago by independent charity group Oxfam International. According to www.oxfam.org, "Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working together with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty, suffering and injustice."
The Hunger Banquet will constitute part of a 30-year campaign to raise awareness about and donations to combat world hunger, called the Fast for a World Harvest, according to www.hungerbanquet.org.
The campaign seeks to address the underlying causes of world hunger. The problem, as Oxfam sees it, lies not in a shortage of food, but rather represents an imbalance in the distribution of food, education, resources and power.
The lack of a proper education denies children in developing countries the opportunity to rise out of poverty. A lack of access to resources makes it difficult for farmers, already beleaguered by the demands of world trade, to produce and profit from their goods.
Ethnic and religious discrimination is also a factor as it limits minority access to government aid and resources. Wars and local conflicts in many developing nations compound these problems.
After three decades, the campaign has raised over $10 million to help millions of people around the world suffering from chronic hunger. College campuses and community centers all around the world have also offered programs based on the Oxfam script.
The site listed some startling statistics about this global problem. "More than 850 million people suffer from chronic hunger. In the U.S. alone, almost 36 million people live in poverty. Globally, 30,000 children under the age of five die every day, mostly from preventable causes, including malnutrition."
A UNICEF fact sheet on the Hunger Banquet explained that children have suffered severely. Almost one in two children in the world live in poverty, and 16 percent are malnourished.
The Hunger Banquet is run in a peculiar way. Every person who attends the event is given a ticket that randomly assigns them to the high, middle, or low-income brackets. The number of people assigned to each class is scaled to represent the real percentages around the world.
Typically, 15 percent of guests are placed in the high-income class, 25 percent in the middle-income class and the remaining 60 percent in the low-income class.
Each group is then offered a different meal. Those guests situated in the high-income bracket receive a full-course meal; those in the middle class make do with rice and beans; the remaining mass eat only rice.
The purpose is to provide students with an opportunity to experience first-hand the inequalities that perpetuate the world.
"Many student groups have wanted to bring a Hunger Banquet to campus for several semesters now. It is truly inspiring to work as a coalition of student groups who care about social justice, but who wouldn't normally work together on projects," said coordinator of the event, Elyse Lichtenthal.
Lichtenthal is a representative of both Hillel Tzedek, an on-campus Jewish advocacy organization, and the UMass Red Cross Club, the student extension of the Hampshire County Red Cross.
The meal will not be the only component of this event. There will also be a community service fair, a food drive, a slide show presentation from Oxfam and a speech from State Representative Ellen Story.
This free event is open to the public. The Hunger Banquet is being held on Tuesday, Dec. 5 from 6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m. at UMass. Guests are requested to donate canned food. For more information, e-mail umasshb@gmail.com or visit www.umasshunger.com.