Dinner experiment to teach hunger

Thanks to Students Advocating Service at The U of M, students can have a bite to eat and learn about world hunger and poverty.

SAS will host a dinner banquet to raise money and awareness for the poor and starving in the Panhellenic Ballroom at 6 p.m. on March 27.

Members of the organization will sell $10 tickets and at the door until the event. President of SAS Shannon Webb said she expects about 100 people to attend the banquet.

SAS will divide dinner guests into three different financial classes, based on World Development Report statistics. Approximately 15 percent fall into the upper class tier, 25 percent in the middle class and 60 percent in the lowest class.

The upper class, representing those who earn $9,266 or more a year, will dine at an elaborately decorated table and eat a full course meal served on china. Those representing the middle class, earning between $756 and $9,266 per year, will sit at a bare table and receive a meal of rice, beans and water on an average plate with a fork. The lowest class, who live on less than $756 per year, will sit on the floor and will be only served a handful of rice.

According to Webb, the banquet is not designed to provide guests with a full stomach, but to give them a greater understanding of the problems associated with global hunger and poverty.

"No one will know what class they will be in because it is designed to raise awareness of just how little some people have to live off of," Webb said

After everyone has eaten, assistant professor Esra Ozdenerol of the earth sciences department will lead a discussion and present her most recent research on hunger in the Mid-South. She and dinner guests will then discuss how they felt about receiving smaller portions of food and watching other classes eat.

"She will be asking for reactions to the whole event," said Joe Smith, SAS fundraising chair. "It is also a social experiment to see how people are going to interact with each other because of the classes given to them."

Ozdenerol's Mid-South Hunger Project will work with local food pantries and volunteers using technology to help poverty-stricken people in the 31 counties making up the Mid-South.

"My students and I are actually going to go to those counties with other groups, find out their needs and start more community projects to help," Ozdenerol said.

She will introduce the project at the hunger banquet with global statistics, maps and information in her presentation.

She will also show how new technologies will reduce hunger.

Katie Durham, SAS campus activities chair, said a fundraiser like the hunger banquet teaches people the struggle some countries face.

"It is important to realize this is not a world of equality and here in America, many take advantage of the fact that we can eat wherever and whenever we want," Durham said. "All the while, there are other places in the world where people eat whatever they can scrounge up, if anything, and oftentimes have to drink unclean water."

"It is a fundraiser for SAS, and after we take all the costs away from paying for the food, our profits are going to be small," Durham said. "But we are trying to raise enough money to donate to a local organization - we haven't decided which one yet - and help them fight poverty and hunger."