Hungry? I doubt it.

I was a guest at Boy #1's school assembly this morning. This sort of thing is always going to be impressive for parents of children who apparently do 'nothing' at school all day, who 'didn't learn anything', and who didn't play 'with anyone, Mama...' Today's assembly was no different. My older son, the one who doesn't learn anything, took part in a short play in which the only language spoken was Russian. But still - he doesn't actually learn anything at school, obviously.

The assembly however was not all about Boy #1 (amazingly). Each year that attended made a short presentation, sang a song, or did a play, and what really impressed me was a presentation the 5th graders did on their recent Hunger Banquet. Not having children of the right age (in this school that's 10 and 11 years old), I hadn't come across the concept of a Hunger Banquet before, and I have to say that I thought it was an amazing way to let our children - the children of the lands of plenty - understand some of the imbalance in the world.

It may be that this is an established tradition in your children's school, in which case I apologise for telling you things you already know, but if you haven't heard of such a thing, here is how a Hunger Banquet works...

The children are told not to bring any snacks or packed lunch into school with them on the chosen day. They eat nothing before lunchtime, at which point they are randomly given a ticket, which will be one of 3 colours. At our school, they were blue, white and red (Russian national flag colours, appropriately). 15% of the total tickets were blue, 35% were red, and 50% were white. The children then went to the relevantly coloured food counter; here's what happened next.

• The 15% with blue tickets were given chicken wings, fries, nachos and ice cream for their lunch. They were also allowed to go up for seconds.
• The 35% with red tickets were given a smaller serving, of rice and vegetables for their lunch, and no seconds.
• The 50% with white tickets were given a very small cup of water and a small cup of rice each, and of course, no seconds. If they wanted more water, they had to leave the dining hall and walk down the corridor with their small cup, which they could refill once.

I don't know about you, but this seems to me a very powerful way of communicating to tweenagers the imbalances of food supply in our world today - and the presentation that some of them subsequently made to the rest of the school underscored that...

Click here if you're interested in finding out more about hosting a Hunger Banquet. (Oh, and no children were harmed in the presentation of this concept; the kids without the blue tickets were given a snack once they got back to their classrooms...)