The Volunteers Incorporating Service into Our Neighborhoods Center and the Social Welfare Action Alliance held a viewing of the 2012 documentary, “A Place at the Table,” in the Halle Library Auditorium Wednesday night to address the issue of the 50 million Americans without enough to eat.
Vanessa Marr, Abd., a professor for Women’s and Gender Studies at Eastern Michigan University, was the keynote speaker.
The film depicts hunger in America and offers a look into the lives of three individuals who struggle with not having enough food.
Dr. Marr spoke of her own dilemma as a mother and full-time student waiting in a Department of Human Services office seeking food assistance, only to be told that there was no help available.
“I know that when I get home I am going to have to tell the kids again, as I have done too many times before that there isn’t enough [food] today,” she said in her speech.
As an activist, Marr said that she uses her personal anecdotes to talk about food justice, which she said “seems like a very vague and nebulous term.”
Food justice is a term used to define the work of eradicating food insecurity, which is defined by Google as a state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
The student social work organization, Social Welfare Action Alliance, likes to hold documentary nights on campus to educate students about different social justice issues, according to Ashley DiGiuseppe, a member and social work major from Ypsilanti.
“There are a lot of big issues in our country,” she said. “A ton of people are hungry all the time, and they don’t have access to food and a lot of people who can’t afford good food end up being obese. It’s really sad.”
Eastern Michigan University’s campus is not immune to food insecurity. DiGuiseppe has spent time volunteering with SOS Community Services and said that many EMU students use the SOS food pantries.
“When you’re trying to pay for school and all of your other life expenses, sometimes food comes last,” she said.
VISION does not have corresponding data showing how many students on campus are food insecure, but Haley Moraniec, president of SWAA and coordinator of the Volunteer Challenge at the VISION Center, said that the percentage of students who receive Pell grants has increased from 29 percent in 2009 to 57 percent in 2014.
“There are so many people that you wouldn’t expect to be food insecure,” Moraniec said. “It [food insecurity] affects everyone, our community, students you sit next to in class.”
She added: “Those numbers show that so many of our students need financial help.”
The organizations and Dr. Marr hope that educational forums like this provoke conversations and awareness of the hunger issues that EMU and communities are faced with.
“For me it’s the notion that we all can do something, that this is not just a government problem, even though the film focused largely on governmental programs that need to be readdressed and reassessed,” Marr said. “We, as individuals, have the power to facilitate change and we can work at the grass roots level to make that happen.”
