Hungey Banquet

                Tonight for the hunger banquet I learned a lot about the world poverty level. Here is some things I will be pondering and maybe it will inspire others to think too.

                For those who don’t know, the hunger banquet brings about awareness of the unequal distribution of food in the world and how much of the people in the world have to eat every day. The low income people had a plate with a handful of rice, that was their dinner, middle class had some beans and pasta with their handful of rice, high income had a full dinner buffet. We picked a card to determine our fate,  I was middle class. The room was split up unequally to show the unequal chance for food in the world.

 

On a world scale:

 

Anyone who makes over 12,000 a year is high income

 

15 percent of the world is high income

 

35 percent middle income making appx 4,000-12,000 a year

 

50 percent is low income is less than 4,000 a year and the average salary a year for lower class is 988 a year. 2 dollars a day

 

 

People are born into poverty. They don’t chose it.

 

Poverty is not because the world does not have enough food for everyone it’s because people don’t have the resources for that food.

I wonder:

 

What should we define as “poverty” in the USA?

 

I realize some people in the USA make less than 12,000 and it’s a struggle for them because life in the USA is not cheap.

But think of the people who say they have cable TV and a cell phone but say they are “poor”.  

There are people who work 16 hour days, walking for miles to their jobs and eat one meal a day, lucky if they have two.

I am not trying to bash anything, rather to just make people think.

 

As I sit here thinking of all of this, my stomach is growling. Even though I was lucky enough to be middle class, I am still hungry. I am not used to eating so little for dinner. I guess I just feel lucky J