Kari Visness has seen real hunger. She's seen what it's like to truly go without. Not in her hometown of Karlstad, Minn., but in Nepal, where her parents served as missionaries from 1984 to 1990. Visness, a junior majoring in dietetics at the University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC) was only four years old upon her family's arrival in Nepal. But even at such a young age, the images are forever etched in her mind.
"Our garbage was their treasure," Visness said. "You'd eat a banana and throw the peel on the ground, and a child would run and pick it up and start scraping its insides with his teeth. That's how hungry they were."

Ten years after returning to America, Visness said that, sadly, some of her memories of Nepal aren't as vivid as they once were. But her experience at UMC's inaugural Hunger Banquet on Tuesday, Feb. 19 brought her memories back into full view in her mind.

"We truly have no idea how much we have," Visness said. "My hope is that this unique event will give people just a little glimpse into the lives of people throughout the world who, essentially, have nothing."
She remembers young people in Nepal begging for her family's tin cans and plastic bottles.

"They were empty, but when you have nothing, you'll do anything to get something, even if it's just a container," Visness said. "Maybe they could fill the bottles with some dirty water."

Visness is one of a handful of students who assisted UMC's Service Learning office and Campus Ministries office in organizing and promoting the Hunger Banquet. Modeled after Oxfam America's vision of a similar event ( www.oxfamamerica.org ), UMC's Hunger Banquet didn't fill the stomachs of the 81 students, faculty, staff and Crookston citizens who attended. But for the $5.75 cost to get into Bede Ballroom, those who attended witnessed images impossible to put a price on.

Profits from UMC's Hunger Banquet are being donated to the Care & Share Center in Crookston. Peggy Miller, a sociology instructor at the university who over the past five years has brought approximately 800 of her students to the Care & Share to prepare, serve and eat meals with the center's homeless residents, served as master of ceremonies. Miller is also the coordinator of UMC's Alcohol and Other Drug Awareness Program (AODAP), another event sponsor.

The Hunger Banquet's goal was to open some eyes and trigger conversation both at the event and afterward. Still, Visness said, 90 minutes wassn't enough time to show what real poverty is like.
"This is real; this is how people live every minute of their lives all over the world," she said. "We need to realize that, and do something to help these people who are guilty of nothing but being born in the wrong place at the wrong time."