Students Advocating Volunteer Involvement is partnering with Omicron Delta Kappa in the Office of Lead and Serve to host a Hunger Banquet on Wednesday, April 13, at 7 p.m. in the Live Oak Pavilion on Florida Atlantic’s Boca Raton campus.

“Many students may not know that there could be someone in class with them who does not know where they will get their next meal,” said Allison Miller, president of ODK. “We’re hoping through this event we can expand knowledge of this issue and people will take note, help out and get more involved in their communities.”

The dinner will be hosted through OXFAM America, an organization which hosts banquets around the world to raise awareness of people struggling with hunger, poverty and social injustice. This event will also be a fundraiser where students will bring at least one canned food item to enter; it is not open to the public.

Prior to this, the event was hosted by SAVI and ODK individually. This year, the two organizations partnered to try to attract a larger crowd, according to Miller.

The groups have designed an interactive plan to showcase real-life scenarios for students to understand the reality of hunger problems both on campus and on a global scale.

“When students enter they will get a card that will have written on it a story of someone living in a lower income group or upper income class group,” said Miller. “Depending on the card and story they get, they will receive a meal that represents how these people really live.”

The stories will focus on people from the lower class, middle class, upper class or 1 percent in society.  

The students representing the 1 percent will sit at the nicest table in the house and will have wine glasses filled with club soda. They will also be waited on by a staff of 20 volunteers.

The students representing the lower class will have to sit on the floor with a cup.

“When we decided to take on the hunger banquet this year, we didn’t have much information on past banquets,” said Aaron Sherman, SAVI director. “We kind of had to reinvent the wheel on this one, which was cool because we have all this creativity now.”

The canned and non-perishable food items will be donated to the campus’s Beyond Food program, which launched in January of 2015. It ensures food will be available for FAU students that face food insecurity, according to its website. For more information on OXFAM America, you can visit its website here.

Joe Pye is a staff writer for the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet him @Jpeg3189.