Today, students from Swarthmore College participated in a Hunger Banquet, an interactive event hosted by Amnesty International. Tim Burke, associate professor of history, moderated a discussion about world hunger and global inequality. Students also gave short presentations encouraging others to take action. They spoke about efforts–such as microcredit–that have made strides in advancing global development. The main goal of the Hunger Banquet was to offer students an interactive lesson and encourage the students to experience an emotional connection with the global poor, without the usual roster of starving children imagery. Representatives from Oxfam, an international relief group that works towards solving hunger, poverty and injustice, also attended the event.

Amnesty campus chapter president Linda Wang said, “I got involved with Oxfam in high school…and organized a successful hunger banquet at my high school, and have wanted to see it done on campus.”

Sound like a great idea for your community? Visit Oxfam’s website to find out how you can host your own Hunger Banquet.

Read more about Swarthmore’s event in their online newspaper.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Events, Students, Take Action, Global Development, Global Poverty, Microcredit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.