Hunger exhibition rolls onto campus

An exhibit came to campus last weekend to fight hunger on wheels.

“This is Hunger” is an interactive audio and visual show that takes place on a traitor-trailer. The show tells people's’ stories of their struggles with hunger.

Food studies and the University Honors Program co-sponsored the exhibit. Food studies professor Danny Mintz said that the exhibit is important for the community to see.

“It gave us the opportunity to bring to our campus community, and our New Orleans community more broadly, very meaningful and impactful stories,” Mintz said.

The exhibit is a part of a series for projects by Mazon: a Jewish Response to Hunger, which is a non-profit working to end hunger in America.

The “This is Hunger” bus started it’s 60 city tour in November 2016. Tour facilitator Jackie Schicker said they decided to stop in New Orleans because over 23 percent of people in Orleans Parish are affected by hunger.

She said that she wants the bus to start a conversation for everyone who sees it.

“We hope that it also encourages people to consider hunger an issue of theirs,” Schicker said.

The bus is lined with writings of people describing what hunger is like, because Schicker said that hunger has many faces.

Some of the lines said, “This is convincing yourself that a bag of chips is a meal,” and “This is skipping out on dinner with friends because you can’t afford to pay the tip.”

Mintz said that they brought the bus to campus so that students can realize that some of their fellow classmates suffer from hunger.

“Hunger can be more of a problem on college campuses than we think it is,” Mintz said.

He said he hopes this exhibit will help people see the problem of hunger in a new light.

“Hunger doesn’t only affect the people who you might typically think of as going hungry but exists always as a possibility,” Mintz said.

He said that the food studies program will host more events like this on campus.

“The great opportunities of the food studies program for us is the ability to bring events like this to campus and to use food as an opportunity to talk about a wide variety of issues,” Mintz said.