Fifty years after its launch, the Oxfam Hunger Banquet® program shows no signs of slowing down.
On the Thursday before Thanksgiving in 1974, more than 250,000 people nationwide took a pledge to skip a meal, fast for the day, or raise awareness about hunger. That day started a movement. This was the launch of Oxfam’s Fast for a World Harvest (FAST) campaign, an educational campaign that continues today, 50 years later.
Over the decades, Oxfam’s approach to fighting hunger has evolved, but the campaign’s signature program—the Oxfam Hunger Banquet event teaching tool—has remained the same. More than 950,000 people have participated in these interactive experiences, and for many Oxfam supporters, attending an Oxfam Hunger Banquet event in high school or college is a formative memory from that time. Core to its lasting power is an experiential element that allows participants to suspend their own reality and sit with someone else’s perspective for 90 minutes.
How does it work? When someone attends an Oxfam Hunger Banquet event, they select a character ticket out of a basket. The character is either from a high-, middle-, or low-income background, and that character’s income will determine everything about the participant’s experience, from where they sit in the room to the food that is available to them.
For instance, someone who selects a high-income character ticket may be treated to a full-course catered meal and be seated comfortably at a dining table, while someone who picks a low-income ticket will be seated on the floor and given a small portion of rice and water. The people on these tickets represent real people Oxfam works with. Engaging with the everyday realities people face demonstrates how inequality works in a tangible way.
Nancy Delaney, a former Oxfam staff member who oversaw the Oxfam Hunger Banquet event program for 20 years, describes the transformation she repeatedly witnessed. “People might come to an event for class credit or to support the organizers, and you will see their minds shift. By the time it’s over, they are raising their hands and talking about how their perspectives have changed.”
It’s not uncommon to see someone moved to tears or visibly uncomfortable with being granted a lavish meal while members of their community make do with meager portions.
Oxfam Hunger Banquet® events hit the road
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, Oxfam worked with champions in the entertainment industry and allies on Capitol Hill to hold a series of special Oxfam Hunger Banquet event benefits to facilitate conversations about global hunger on a larger scale. In Hollywood, celebrities such as Ed Asner, Danny Glover, and Alfre Woodard were treated to meals where those separated into the low-income category dined on straw mats.
In Washington, D.C., members of the House Select Committee on Hunger helped support our events, where celebrity chefs served food to an audience of mostly congressional staff. These Oxfam Hunger Banquet events helped get Oxfam into dialogue with political leaders such as former Vice President Al Gore, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, and the late governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson.
In 2004, former Congressman Tony Hall used the Oxfam Hunger Banquet event as a tool to teach diplomats an unforgettable lesson. While serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations food agencies in Rome, Hall hosted a Thanksgiving reception. Guests showed up expecting a traditional turkey dinner and were met instead with rice and water, forced to confront the realities of inequality.
A teaching tool like no other
While these events elevated the Oxfam Hunger Banquet to a new level of public consciousness, our Oxfam community has always included educators and hunger advocates. Teachers incorporate the Oxfam Hunger Banquet event into their annual lesson plans, and college groups, churches, and organizations—such as the Girl Scouts and 4-H—build these activities into their calendars.
Sister Evelyn McKenna has hosted Oxfam Hunger Banquet events for 30 years at Notre Dame Academy, an all-girls college preparatory Catholic school in Worcester, Massachusetts. Run by students in the school’s Oxfam Club, it’s become a staple event for the school community, with some students attending year after year. Though McKenna retired, she continues to work with students to host the events and says the banquet is a great teaching tool to help people of all ages have discussions about what it’s like to not have enough to eat while others have more than enough.
Parents who have joined the events find themselves thinking about what it would be like to not have enough food to feed their children.
The Oxfam Hunger Banquet event continues to adapt with the times. At the height of the pandemic, we offered tools for remote events. As food insecurity continues to rise due to conflicts, climate change, and growing inequality, we have updated our event scripts to draw an explicit connection between hunger and inequality.
Looking to the future, we plan to work with even more colleges and universities to host Oxfam Hunger Banquet events on campuses across the United States.