The Woodson Black Awareness Committee and the Committee for the Awareness of Mexican-American Culture have teamed to host this year’s Hunger Banquet to increase awareness of poverty in the U.S.
Attendees will draw a color to represent an ethnicity and class and be served a meal relative to that status. During the event, there will be presentations from professors on health and poverty in the U.S.
OxFam, a collection of international organizations, works to address and solve poverty and related issues. As the creators and sponsors of The Hunger Banquet, it provides resources online so organizations like WBAC and CAMAC may host their own hunger banquets.
“[The WBAC] puts on events that not necessarily shocks people, but puts perspective in people’s views,” said Diamilatou Sow, event director and senior international studies major. “We focus on issues that are not tapped into.”
Aja Holston, WBAC chair and senior political science major, said the WBAC has previously addressed the hunger crisis in the U.S.
“It started at the beginning of the year with our can and school supply drive called Brain Food, and we addressed economic disparity then,” Holston said. “Then, Hunger Banquet was brought up and the subcommittees wanted to make it something from an international scale to a more localized scale.”
Although poverty in foreign countries is addressed in the media, Sow said people often forget that there are problems domestically.
“It breaks my heart that at times we forget that Americans may not have enough to eat and we need to focus a little bit more here at home and start at home,” Sow said.
Holston said she hopes students leave the event with more knowledge of economic disparity in the U.S.
“I just want people to start having curiosity, and there’s not a lot we can cover in an hour or so about how race and ethnicity play an important role, so I’d hope people dive more into that [once they leave],” Holston said.
The Hunger Banquet will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday in MSC 2400. The banquet ticket is $1 and can be purchased at the MSC Box Office.