Hunger Banquet 2006 | Oxfam America @ NYU

Harvesting Hope to End Hunger

05 APR 06 | Our annual Hunger Banquet was a HUGE success this year! With over 100 attendees and amazing guest speakers, this was essentially one of the biggest social justice events at NYU this year.

The Hunger Banquet was on April 5th, 2006 in the E&L auditorium in the Kimmel Center for Student Life. With attendees facing the luck of the draw, they were assigned an economic status for the evening, with the total room being proportional to world poverty statistics. With 60% of the people representing the poor and sitting on the ground, 25% as middle class and in chairs, and 15% at banquet tables of the rich, the evening was an extremely powerful and enlightening occassion.

The amazing guest speakers of the night included Jacqueline Murekatete and Supriya Banavalikar from The Hunger Project. Jacqueline Murekatete is currently a third year undergraduate student at New York University where she studies politics and English. She was born in Rwanda in November of 1984 and came to the United States in 1995, after having lived through the Rwandan Genocide.

The Hunger Project is an organization currently working in over 10,000 villages across 13 countries to come up with sustainable and lasting solutions to end hunger and poverty. Their strategies involve empowering people to address the root causes of hunger in their own communities. The Hunger Project has been working to end world hunger since their founding in 1977.

The Hunger Banquet is an informative and inspirational event that simulates the vast inequalities plaguing our global population. This event portrays the reality of what it means to live without the most basic human need. It is meant to motivate each and every one of us to make a commitment to the fight for social justice and human rights. Hunger is in essence the most extreme form of poverty. We have the resources to see an end to world hunger in our lifetime; we only need the motivation to do so.

Special thanks to all of our Oxfam volunteers! The night would not have been possible without your passionate commitment to Oxfam and the fight for social justice.

» More Hunger Banquet '06 photos