by Julien Bettencourt
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Hudson High School once again hosted the Hunger Banquet on March 9 to teach kids how to come up with solutions for poverty, hunger and intolerance. The Hunger Banquet has been a tradition for four years at Hudson High;the SADD group has volunteered to help for the past three years and to explain to the middle schoolers from Sudbury, Acton, Maynard and Marlborough what hunger is and how they can help.
The SADD groups showed in the auditorium a video where they explained and showed what people suffered from hunger around the world and how kids in America could help. The Oxfam America group is a charity group to help the people in need and to raise awareness for this problem. The SADD group used the Oxfam America group as a sponsor because it is the Oxfam group that asks people around the world to help raise awareness about this serious problem.
Every school that entered received a card saying in what social class they belong, as they were later playing a game. That social class would determine the food that they would eat. They did that so the middle schoolers understood how people are treated according to the social classes they belong to. After the SADD group spoke to the middle schoolers, the participants came out of the auditorium and sat in the seat corresponding to their cards. Then people from the SADD group called the kids from each social class, and they would only get a certain amount of food. The poor got a cup of rice and water, the middle class, rice, water, and salad, and the rich got everything the other classes got including pizza and juice. They would eat and be asked questions of how they felt about the differences and share feelings.
Brian Sousa, vice president of the SADD group, felt, “The kids learned a lot, and they could experience firsthand how it felt to be without food.” This event was supposed to happen in November, but they changed it to March as the kids from the middle schools could not come.
Brian Sousa was in the kitchen making the food, but there were a lot of problems. Brian “was stressed out to get people to do their jobs cooking food. They didn’t have anything. I had to buy and prepare everything in the end. But it was a controlled chaos and everything was on time. And I hope that the kids someday share the experience they had with others.”
Despite the chaos in the kitchen, it was a really good experience and a well organized banquet to raise the knowledge of kids about hunger.
