Each year during Lent students in the Senior School are encouraged to reflect on how fortunate we are to be well-fed, with access to nutritious food all year round. In Monday’s assemblies we learned that there are more than 700 million people (11 times the population of the UK) in the world who go hungry every day. In addition there are 2.8 billion people in the world who are unable to afford or provide for themselves a healthy diet.
That there is enough food in the world for no-one to be hungry, and yet so many people are hungry, is something it is right to feel upset by.
We would all like to end world hunger, although as we learned in assembly, there are many reasons why there is hunger in the world and solutions are difficult. The least we can do, however, is to put ourselves in the smallest way in the shoes of one of those more than 700 million people in the world by going without our normal lunch, on just one day of the year.
Today all the Senior students, and all the staff, were invited to take part in a ‘Rich World / Poor World’ meal. Twelve students were selected at random for a wonderful three-course banquet, a ‘Rich World’ meal, prepared by Mandy and her catering team, while everybody else was served soup, a baguette, and fruit. The Rich World / Poor World meal is a powerful way of illustrating that while everyone in the world is created equal, not everyone has equal access to many of the things we can easily take for granted, including food. We truly should be grateful for the food we are able to enjoy, that is denied to so many in the world.
