HE MAY BE better known as this newspaper's ?man in Hollywood,? but Ruben Nepales as well as his wife Janet might soon be better known as the parents of Bianca, currently a student at the University of California in Berkeley.
Bianca is one of three resident assistants at Berkeley?s Unit 3 Beverly Cleary Hall and a main organizer of the ?Hunger Banquet,? a project aimed at raising awareness of hunger in the world.
An article in the campus publication described the setting: ?About 15 students were seated at tables, and waiters brought them pasta and salad. A bigger group of students served themselves rice and beans from a buffet. And the biggest bunch sat on the floor to share a meager meal of just rice and water.?
As Bianca explained: ?We placed them at different income levels that were representative of the world, and we fed them meals according to their status. We hoped we?d give them a taste of what inequality would feel like.?
The dinner follows a model developed by Oxfam International and used in other college campuses as part of Hunger Awareness Week. The Berkeley dinner was held in collaboration with the campus chapter of Amnesty International, and was planned to wind up with a hands-on sustainability lesson/community garden project.
According to the article, this is the first year that Berkeley students have extended their hunger awareness campaign to a full week, with the Hunger Banquet as the centerpiece. Some 100 students took up the free dinner invitation and were randomly assigned to their groups. Not surprisingly, most of the 50 students who found themselves counted among the lowest income group got up when they were served only rice and water.
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?IN OUR generation, the images of hunger we see have become very accepted?almost as if that?s just how it is,? Bianca, a third-year student majoring in public health, with a minor in global poverty and practice, told the student publication. ?There?s not so much focus on what we can do.?
Among the issues she hoped to highlight: the food waste that goes on in campus cafés and dining commons, and the fact that students? food decisions have an impact on other people in the world, including farmers. The dinner was free but students were encouraged to make donations to Oxfam, a nonprofit that offers disaster and poverty aid. The guest speaker was a representative from People?s Grocery, which works to improve food security in Oakland, a human reminder that hunger happens very close to home.
?Even the best of us can be fazed by the numbers?the millions and billions in poverty,? said Nepales. ?We wanted to give residents the opportunity to take action, to see that simple small steps can have an impact in the world, that even a few dollars can make a difference if a lot of people get involved.?
Indeed, getting young people for whom hunger is just an abstract concept to think about the issue and even feel it in their gut takes well, guts. But to the credit of Bianca and her colleagues, they not only convinced many of their fellow students to take part in this unusual banquet, they also managed to establish the link between individual eating habits and hunger experienced by the rest of the world. Congratulations, then, not just to Bianca but also to Ruben and Janet, who obviously raised their daughters (Bianca has a younger sister) right.
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ON THE home front, hunger is not so much an abstract concept as a daily reality, especially for the growing number of Filipinos who regard themselves as poor and struggling.
For some years now, the government has been engaged in an ?Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program,? with the National Nutrition Council providing oversight. The council is chaired by Health Secretary (and recently declared Senate contender) Francisco Duque, and includes the heads of different agencies, some of which may not be directly linked?at least in the popular mind?to reducing hunger, but whose responsibilities play a part in alleviating it.
One such agency is the Population Commission, which develops policy and programs regarding population growth and management. One of its main advocacies is the promotion of the Responsible Parenthood Movement-Natural Family Planning (RPM-NFP) seminars, where couples are taught not just the basics of modern NFP, but also the requirements of responsible parenthood and management of one?s life and fertility.
It was after one such seminar that Marita Colambo and her husband Diolito decided to adopt NFP, specifically the Standard Days Method. Previously, Marita was using an IUD to protect herself from another pregnancy but was experiencing difficulties and discomfort from it. After attending an RPM-NFP seminar, the Colambo couple decided to adopt the SDM, which involves using a string of beads as a guide to tell them when it was ?safe? and ?unsafe? to have sex, the better to prevent an unplanned pregnancy. So far, they have been able to raise their three children comfortably on Diolito?s income as a cook. Aside from being able to send their children to school and meet their daily needs without needless worries, the couple say they have also been able to buy three small parcels of land in Iloilo and Tanay.
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PROVIDING couples with the means to plan their family size may not seem to be a hunger-mitigation approach. But by giving couples the motivation to plan their future, the freedom to decide, and the information they need to successfully practice family planning, the state is in effect helping them to more responsibly look after their families and themselves, allowing them to live a better life and make better choices.
