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Thanksgiving is just around the corner, a holiday that evokes thoughts of hearth and home, celebration — and often over-indulgence — at the dinner table. But the spotlight next week at Boston College is on hunger and famine, during a two-day event that precedes national Hunger Awareness and Homelessness Week.
O’Neill Plaza will be the site on Nov. 9 and 10 for the 40 Hour Famine, a student organized multi-media project designed to raise famine awareness and to ignite and sustain action aimed at diminishing inequalities in the global food system.
The event will include speakers, a meditation session, a 40-minute silent vigil for those lost to starvation and for the chronically hungry, a presentation on the effects of famine on the human body and a photography exhibition by EcoPledge. Related art activities include mask-making, poster-art projects, performing arts events and a collaborative sculpture project.
“Hunger is preventable,” says organizer Zachary Desmond ’12, who will lead discussions on famine-related topics. But, as he writes in his blog, also titled the 40 Hour Famine, “people are starving in Boston, in the United States and around the world. Our food-related actions here have consequences on food access, hunger and famine abroad.”
He hopes “to inform the student body of what famine is, how contemporary famine is a symptom of systemic global food inequalities, and what we can do as individuals, a community and a nation to equalize food access.”
Desmond worked to develop the initiative with Associate Professor of Theatre Crystal Tiala under the auspices of the Arts and Social Responsibility Project, which she chairs and for which he serves on the student board of advisers.
BC community members are encouraged to sign a pledge vowing to fast in solidarity with those around the world who struggle with chronic hunger, and to attend events held by campus organizations related to Hunger Awareness and Homelessness Week (Nov. 12-20).
In addition, there will be a number of collaborative art projects and informational presentations designed to generate dialogue.
“Creating art, telling stories and building solidarity are the three things that I feel carry information from the brain to the heart, from thought to action,” Desmond says.
Students and others, he explains, may pledge to fast for all or any number of meals over the 40-hour period, and to contribute what they would have spent on food for those meals to an organization actively combating world hunger.
But Desmond emphasizes the “flexibility of the pledge; 40 hours is a goal to aim for, but pledging to any number of hours of intentional fasting is encouraged. Our first priority is the safety of our participants, and breaking the fast is encouraged if at any point a participant feels he or she is in physical danger.”
As of late October, he had received more than 50 responses from students expressing interest in participating in the fast.
The related collaborative art demonstrations are essential to the project, according to Desmond. “It puts a person behind the information, a face to the hunger and a voice to the unheard. We hope to foster sustained connections and help transfer information into a catalyst for change, to stir thoughts into action, to mold comprehension into compassion. It is a method by which we can create solidarity and a community dialogue, to do something and to do it with others in mind.”
Desmond was inspired to launch this initiative after volunteering for six weeks last summer at an arts empowerment center and orphanage just outside Arusha, Tanzania, a region with a serious food shortage.
“This was the first time I had ever been to a place where access to food wasn’t assured. In fact, I had never needed to even think about the availability of food in my entire life. Of course,” he adds, “I had a theoretical understanding that some people didn't have the general food security I had taken for granted.”
After he returned to the US, he worried about the friends he had made, the children in the orphanage and others in Arusha, knowing the food shortage there would only intensify. In the supermarket in his home city of Seattle, it struck him that “there were shelves, aisles, tons of food and so many options, seemingly pointless variations of the same thing.” He began to study famine and food aid, which led him to conceive of and develop a famine awareness project.
Among other campus groups involved in the project are Campus Ministry, the Women’s Resource Center, EcoPledge and the African Students Organization (ASO). The ASO will host activities related to hunger in the US and abroad during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.
Information on pledging is available at the 40 Hour Famine. Pledges also may be signed on campus Nov. 7-10. For details contact Desmond at desmondz@bc.edu.