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Volume CXXXIII, Number 9 |
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Student groups promote hunger, housing awareness
JOY LEE
STAFF WRITER
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| Global Help, a Bowdoin student group, organized an OxFam American Hunger Banquet Wednesday evening in Daggett Lounge in an effort to promote hunger awareness. (Hans Law, Bowdoin Orient) |
Not everyone in the world is lucky enough to have a meal from the best college dining service or accommodations as nice as the quads in Chamberlain. That is why various campus organizations are bringing the National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week to Bowdoin, starting next Sunday.
The National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, held the week before Thanksgiving every year, is a project promoted and publicized by the National Student Association Against Hunger and Homelessness.
The association provides educational materials for college campuses. According to the association, "the main purpose of the Week is to raise awareness of and action on the problems of hunger and homelessness, domestically and internationally."
Here at Bowdoin, Hunger and Homelessness Week is co-sponsored by Habitat for Humanity and the Tedford Shelter.
Jennifer Horwitz '04 is the chair of Bowdoin's chapter of Habitat. She said this is the first year Habitat has participated in Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.
She said Habitat has two primary goals for the week: to educate and to raise money. "Habitat will be holding a pie sale, as well as selling bricks on our 'houses' in the Union in order to build a house this spring in Topsham," she said. "We'll also be holding a panel discussion on Thursday night with several [representatives] from local organizations that are dedicated to helping curb these problems."
Horwitz said the purpose of these activities is to "help the fight against the lack of affordable housing and food. We'll be tabling in the Union all week with information on Hunger and Homelessness locally, in the state of Maine, nationally, and internationally."
Global Help, another Bowdoin student group, organized an OxFam America Hunger Banquet Wednesday night in an effort to educate the campus about hunger and homelessness.
Rachel Jones '04 helped put the event together. "I think that awareness is the main goal for these events," said Jones.
"Every student at Bowdoin is deeply privileged in some sense and it seems easy to forget about those who are not as fortunate when you succumb to the Bowdoin Bubble."
These student organizers are seeking to alleviate hunger and homelessness, and hope that through next week's events the rest of Bowdoin will share a passion for their cause.
Jones explained her zeal for the cause saying, "[OxFam organizer Alissa Cordner '04] and I have discussed how reaching one person at a time is really all we can do right now, but hopefully they will be somewhat empowered by our passion in order to pass it on to someone else," she said.
"I have become very passionate about trying, in what little manners I am able, to alert other people of this social situation."
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