Banquet leaves some hungry

The summer after her freshman year, Maria Wrzosek traveled to Bolivia. What she saw on that… The summer after her freshman year, Maria Wrzosek traveled to Bolivia. What she saw on that trip helped to change her.

“One of the things that struck me was [that] one of the kids had a T-shirt on that said ‘Disney World, wish you were here,’ and I knew that kid wasn’t going there anytime soon,” she said.

After her trip she decided to do her best to help the cause.

About 30,000 children die each day from hunger and other preventable causes, according to Wrzosek, who is now a junior at Pitt. This is more than the total number of full-time students attending all of Pitt’s campuses and graduate schools combined.

Tuesday evening, a Hunger Banquet, which Wrzosek organized, took place in the Ballroom of the William Pitt Union to help make students more aware of the problem. Oxfam, the Amizade Global Service-Learning Center and Bread for the World sponsored the event. These are all organizations dedicated to community service and volunteering, as well as stopping poverty and hunger. Many local businesses also donated food for the event.

About 80 students participated in the Hunger Banquet. Upon entering the door, each person was given a card specifying whether they would be in the high-, middle- or low- income group. They were then seated in three groups according to their status.

Wrzosek went on to tell a story about the general lifestyle of each group.

The high-income group consisted of a mere 15 percent of the people, being those who had an overabundance of healthy food and medical care available to them.

The middle class group was composed of 30 percent of the students and was described as barely having enough money to live on.

The remaining 55 percent of the people were categorized as low-income. They were described as frequently being homeless and usually not having enough food to feed their families.

After the explanation of the social classes, the students were fed based on the way their respective groups ate in real life. The high-income group was given a plentiful amount of well-balanced food, the middle-income group received clean water, rice and bread, and the low-income group was given a mere half of a bowl of rice and dirty water.

Afterward, the students listened as speakers shared their true-life experiences of witnessing the problems caused by hunger throughout the world. The speakers encouraged the audience to volunteer and join the fight against hunger worldwide.

Editor’s note: Maria Wrzosek is a columnist for The Pitt News.