Aviation Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class (Handling) Donya Craig, right, serves chicken to a patron at Norma Todd’s Lunch Break, a soup kitchen in Red Bank, N.J., during a community service project.
The images of hunger and homelessness are not something that are commonly associated with Wyoming, but it does happen here. In October alone, the Laramie Soup Kitchen served more than 1,900 meals to those in need — averaging 82 meals per day during the week. In order to increase awareness of these issues, Student Leadership and Community Engagement and Residence Life and Dining have teamed up to present events for National Homeless and Hunger Awareness Week on campus.
To kick off the events, the documentary “The Line” was shown Monday.
“Poverty looks so different in different areas. It looks different here in Laramie than it does in LA,” Sagan Hunsaker, Coordinator of Alternative Spring Breaks and Volunteer programs, said.
The documentary showed the different faces of poverty in America in order to show that it does not always look like the stereotype.
The Hunger Banquet is scheduled for 6 p.m. tonight in the Washakie Center Rendezvous Room. This interactive dinner works to emphasize the unequal distribution of food in the world by having the attendee’s meals determined by their lots on their tickets. Attendees will not know what they are getting for their meal until they are at the event. Tickets for the banquet are free and are available to students at Washakie Dining Center and in the Wyoming Union today.
The final event is a canned food drive, which will be running the entire week, ending Friday. All of the collected items will be donated to the Laramie Soup Kitchen to help feed Laramie residents battling hunger. Students can drop off canned food to the residence halls or the SLCE office throughout the week and receive a raffle ticket for each item donated. On Friday, winners for prizes will be drawn. Those who donated do not need to be present to win, and winners will be contacted via email.
For more information on the events or to get involved, contact Hunsaker at the SLCE office in Room 006 of the Union or at shunsake@uwyo.edu.
