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Through the Finding Solutions to Hunger project, students and teachers from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, and the United States worked together to understand food-related issues around the world. During the five-week unit, students built a network of collaboration, shared knowledge, and began forming ideas for solutions to hunger. They tackled the following topics:
- Why people are hungry
- Nutritional needs of children and adults
- Distribution of food and resources
- Cultural differences in food consumption
- Eating the way the world eats
- What is chronic hunger and what is famine
- Problems of obesity
- Importance of female education
- Media messages of food and hunger
- Sustainability
During the first week of the course, students researched and discussed the root causes of hunger to begin understanding the issue. They continued to build their background in week two, when they watched a movie on hunger and shared their reflections. They also used the Hunger Map to understand how widespread hunger is, and then looked at the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
By week three, students knew enough about hunger to turn to a different source of information: interviews. During this part of the unit, students interviewed people in their school or community about the cause of hunger and then compared their local food staples to those around the world. This research helped them better process the hunger banquet they took part in during week four, in which they experienced firsthand how unfairly food is distributed in our world. Finally, the unit concluded with students creating an action plan for addressing hunger in their community and beyond.
A teacher from Lebanon reflected on the project, saying, “I was surprised by my students’ commitments to the project. Their serious engagements helped them to finish their tasks earlier. Not only that, but also they used to initiate their reflections…Their spontaneous reflections about fighting hunger have reached everyone in the school community: their friends in all grade levels and all streams, their own teachers (G 11 teachers) and even the teachers of other grade levels, the office, the administrations and every single workers belonging to their school.”
Learn more about the Finding Solutions to Hunger Project!
