Hunger Banquet
Through out this course I have learned life lessons I didn't think I'd learn in a class room environment. Some of these lessons came from speakers who had heart warming and life concerning journeys to tell us to bring awareness to issues of justice today. Service projects that helped us as students not only learn how agencies function but also provided us with life lesson of gratitude and appreciation. The Hunger Banquet was one of these experiences. Many of us will never be able to experience the life of those that are less fortunate and many of us may unfortunately end up in their shoes or hopefully assisting them. The Oxfam America Hunger Banquet allowed for us to get a small glimpse of what it would be like for one meal to be in the shoes of others.
Upon the entrance of the banquet you were provided an index card with a new identity and with that new identity came a new class. There were three sectors in the banquet high class, which was one table for very few people, it was fully adorned with silver ware and a three course meal. There were about three other bare tables for the middle class, and lastly there was the floor for the lower class. It was important to notice the amount of chairs for each sector, the high class had the least , then the middle class, and most of my classmates were in the lower class, which remained seated on the floor.
I was provided a card of a small female business owner. She owned farms and was able to make a living out of them which set her in the middle class. I sat amongst about eight other individuals. We however did not have a three course meal. We had bland pasta and water. This represented the availability for us to feed ourselves, however not in abundance nor the best quality. The lower class had broth and remained on the floor.
The most impacting aspect of this excersice was when random individuals were selected to stand and they were said to experience crisis such as a medical emergency or no rain for crops , these life crisis set them down to the lower class. It really brought reality to the situation, and allowed us to realize this instances can occur to anyone. Our position unfortunately is unstable, therefore we should be compassionate of those in less than favorable situations as we don't know how they got there, what we do know is they wouldn't like to stay there.
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