Cobham Hall’s school community came together at lunchtime today to have a taste of world hunger. As a Round Square school, part of Cobham Hall’s ethos is to develop students with an understanding of global issues, and so today held a ‘World@Lunch’ event.
Teaching staff, support staff, and students gathered together and were randomly divided into Low, Middle or High Income countries. The number of people in each of the three categories was proportionately based on world population statistics. Everyone received a factsheet about their ‘country’, providing information about population size, education and health standards for their country, and the bleakest statistic of all, life expectancy.
Those ‘lucky’ enough to be in the High Income countries – just five people in total – were treated to a sumptuous three course meal, served to them at a well laid table. Those in Middle Income countries received a satisfying and balanced meal. However, as a stark reminder of the challenges faced by approximately 80% of the global population, the majority of students and staff found themselves honorary citizens of Low Income countries, and had rice for lunch.
The aim of this lunch event is to make staff and students aware of the uncomfortable fact that a large proportion of the world’s population do not share in the world’s wealth, and it highlighted the varied attitudes to that knowledge amongst the privileged few who enjoy a high standard of living. To further emphasise the problem, bells rang every 90 seconds throughout the lunch. This signified the death of ten more children, who are dying across the world from malnutrition, or curable disease.
Immediately following the lunch, girls joined their tutor groups for discussion on the issues raised. In a twist to the event this year, and to encourage discussion of corruption and abuse of power, staff were able to offer ‘bribes’ to be seated at the top table – with all money raised being added to the total being sent to charity. Additionally, a further twist saw an aid shipment of bananas – supplied by the wealthy to aid the poorest countries – get intercepted by traffickers and sold on the black market for 50p each. These activities, along with a donation from the School in lieu of money saved from the much smaller lunch, raised over £300, which will be donated to Oxfam.