WHAT: Stand Up Against Poverty Hunger Banquet
WHEN: Saturday, September 18, 2010, 3-5pm
WHERE: The Women's Building, Audre Lorde Room, 3543 18th St. #8, San Francisco, CA 94110 (women, men and children welcome!)
WHY: Stand Up Against Poverty weekend of action is September 17-19th in response to the UN Millennium Development Goals Review Summit, and Oxfam Action Corps and other allied organizations will be planning events all over the nation and the world calling for global development strategy to beat poverty! The SF Bay Area Oxfam Action Corps will be holding a Hunger Banquet to rally local support, spread awareness, and add our city to the map of action taking place this weekend. Learn more about this global event here.
HOW: To attend this event please RSVP at oxfam.sf@gmail.com. Please also let us know if you are able to volunteer at this event (may require you to arrive an hour early and/or stay and hour late).
BACKGROUND/MORE INFO: Help for people in poor communities affected by climate change and food scarcity can come in many forms - one example is the adaptation finance that we've been pushing for this year. But for too long, US assistance to poor countries has been a mixed bag of unfocused measures. We may provide aid to a poor nation but block their economic growth with unfair barriers to trade. We may ship US grains to a region going hungry when sending direct cash assistance would feed people and stimulate the local food economy. Rather than directly engaging with communities on their needs and goals, policy has too often been designed to meet goals pushed by Washington DC, with aid money paid to consultants. The list goes on, and despite some positive signals from President Obama, and bolstering of USAID under its new head Rajiv Shah, the Obama Administration has not made the big changes necessary to fix the outdated system.
In response, Oxfam and allies are calling for a "global development strategy" that brings coherency, transparency, and closer partnership with recipient communities and countries. And this summer presents an opportunity to push such a goal! Nations will convene in NYC this summer for the Millennium Development Goals review summit.
Recently, President Obama released a draft strategy to meet US commitments to the Millennium Development Goals. It embraced a results-oriented approach and positive principals such as transparency and country partnership, but it failed to articulate how to update US laws and put all possible tools into action. It is now our job to take this draft as a leaping off point toward further progress, and to push Congress to demonstrate forward motion on key elements.
What is a Hunger Banquet?
An Oxfam America Hunger Banquet allows participants will get to experience first hand the inequalities in our world, the disproportion of food, wealth and resources, and how our decisions affect others. Guests draw a ticket at random that assign them to either a high, middle, or low-income tier, based on the statistics about the number of people living in poverty in the world. Each income level has a corresponding story and meal (of differing portions). As you can imagine, most people do not leave this "banquet" with full stomachs.
