Collegiate Times

Because the residents of a small village in rural Guatemala do not have a truck, they have to go through middlemen ? known to community members as coyotes ? in order to transport their crops to a nearby market. These middlemen jip the villagers, buying the food at a quarter of its actual value and selling it back to the market vendors for the full price.

But the Guatemalans are not without a way to improve their situation. Workers from a nongovernmental organization called Oxfam International give a loan to the villagers so that they can buy a truck, thereby boosting their economic power fourfold and eventually leading to the construction of a new school and access to health care.

The same organization that provided the loan to the Central American villagers hosted an educational event in Virginia Tech?s Graduate Life Center last night in an effort to show students and Blacksburg residents the realities of global poverty and hunger.

Richard Rich, political science professor and director of the Center for Environmental and Energy Studies, moderated the simulation and said that education and awareness were its primary goals.

?More than 40 percent of the world?s population live in low income countries, but they only account for 3 percent of the world?s trade,? said Rich, who told the anecdote of the Guatemalan village as an example of Oxfam?s work.
Called the Hunger Banquet, the event attracted about 60 participants who were asked upon entering the room to sit at a table, at a chair with no table or on the floor according to a card they were given.

Fifteen percent of the attendees, representing the 15 percent of the world?s population who make more than $9,000 in annual income, sat at the table and were served a three-course meal that included meat. Rich said these participants would consume 70 percent of the world?s grain and have access to health care, transportation and credit.

Meanwhile, 25 percent of the participants sat in chairs scattered throughout the room to represent the quarter of all people who make between $900 and $9,000 a year. The loss of just one crop, Rich said, would force this group into poverty.

The remaining 60 percent of attendees paralleled the lowest socioeconomic class that, Rich said, struggles to meet its basic needs and does not get the minimum calorie intake necessary to support most physical labor. This group sat on the floor and received rice and brown water because of the rampant homelessness and difficult conditions that he said this segment of the population suffers.

Julia Szybala, a junior political science and philosophy major, organized the Hunger Banquet for the student chapter of Oxfam America, which she described as a group ?dedicated to finding lasting solutions to global poverty here on the American front.?

Szybala agreed that the reasons for the simulation were educational and said that the student group was working on a campaign dubbed ?Make Trade Fair? to stop the economic conditions that lead to global poverty.

During the simulation?s discussion period, participants shared personal experiences relating to poverty. One student described a Christian mission trip to South America where she had to hide her food and supplies to prevent poverty-stricken villagers resorting to theft to get food, and another woman said that her work with a local food pantry showed that even Virginia Tech employees are not always making a living wage and sometimes need help feeding their families.

Students in attendance came for differing reasons. Dave Borys, a senior biological systems engineering major, said a friend told him about the Hunger Banquet.

?I thought it was interesting to see how the event played on people?s role in society,? said Borys, who hopes that his academic studies will someday help him offer agricultural solutions to help poor communities get better access to food.

Arlane Gordon-Bray, a freshman international studies major, said she heard about the simulation from her involvement with the International Relations Organization. Gordon-Bray described the event as ?enlightening? and said she knew about world poverty but still learned from the simulation.