UMC to Host "Hunger Banquet" February 19
Kari Visness has seen real hunger. She’s seen what it’s like to truly go without.
Not in her hometown of Karlstad, Minn., but in Nepal, where her parents served as missionaries from 1984 to 1990. Visness, a junior majoring in dietetics at the University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC) was only four years old upon her family’s arrival in Nepal. But even at such a young age, the images are forever etched in her mind.
“Our garbage was their treasure,” Visness said. “You’d eat a banana and throw the peel on the ground, and a child would run and pick it up and start scraping its insides with his teeth. That’s how hungry they were.”
Ten years after returning to America, Visness said that, sadly, some of her memories of Nepal aren’t as vivid as they once were. She hopes that her experience at UMC’s inaugural Hunger Banquet on Tuesday, Feb. 19 will be the catalyst that brings her memories back into full view in her mind.
“We truly have no idea how much we have,” Visness said. “My hope is that this unique event will give people just a little glimpse into the lives of people throughout the world who, essentially, have nothing.”
She remembers young people in Nepal begging for her family’s tin cans and plastic bottles.
“They were empty, but when you have nothing, you’ll do anything to get something, even if it’s just a container,” Visness said. “Maybe they could fill the bottles with some dirty water.”
Visness is one of a handful of students assisting UMC’s Service Learning office and Campus Ministries office in organizing and promoting the Hunger Banquet. Modeled after Oxfam America’s vision of a similar event (www.oxfamamerica.org), UMC’s Hunger Banquet doesn’t promise to fill the stomachs of everyone who attends. But for the $5.75 cost to get into Bede Ballroom, those who attend will witness images impossible to put a price on.
Profits from UMC’s Hunger Banquet will be donated to the Care & Share Center in Crookston. Peggy Miller, a sociology instructor at the university who over the past five years has brought approximately 800 of her students to the Care & Share to prepare, serve and eat meals with the center’s homeless residents, will serve as master of ceremonies. Miller is also the coordinator of UMC’s Alcohol and Other Drug Awareness Program (AODAP), another event sponsor.
The event begins at 6 p.m. and will conclude at approximately 7:30 p.m. Persons interested in attending or simply learning more about the event can call Mike or Nikki at 281-8526, or email chris282@mail.crk.umn.edu.
The Hunger Banquet’s goal will be to open some eyes and trigger conversation--both at the event and afterward. Still, Visness said, 90 minutes isn’t enough time to show what real poverty is like.
“This
is real; this is how people live every minute of their lives all over the
world,” she said. “We need to realize that, and do something to help
these people who are guilty of nothing but being born in the wrong place
at the wrong time.”
Written by Mike
Christopherson Posted 02/12/2002
Contact: Andrew Svec,
218-281-8435