By 2050, nine billion people in this world will be living in hunger. Universities Fighting World Hunger is dedicated to ending the current poverty situation and preventing it from recurring in the future.

The organization was first established in 2004, when Auburn University was invited to participate in a campaign to mobilize students to fight against hunger, along with the U.N.’s World Food Program , the world’s largest humanity agency. In its first ten years, UFWH has been established as an organization that integrates multi-disciplinary academic with grassroots activities, spread out over 300 campuses.

The following are some of the major activities UFWH is involved in:

· Raising hunger awareness and consciousness.
· Advocating for and teaching students how to get more involved into the campaign.
· Providing a Hunger Studies Minor and other research opportunities in the university
· Partnering with major humanity organizations such as WFP and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Universities provide breeding grounds for innovations. One of the ideas of the organization is bringing people from all disciplines together to solve the hunger problem. UFWH holds an annual summit, inviting people from all areas to discuss cutting-edging research and solutions.

In addition to its convocations, UFWH has launched an international campaign, called “Why Care.” A group of students are called to ask themselves and the peers around them why they should care about global hunger. The question pushes the responders to develop personal and ingenuous answers. The purpose of this campaign is to make people realize that poverty is not far away from us, and the first step in solving it is saying “we actually care.”

– Jing Xu

Sources: Auburn University 1, Auburn University: War on Hunger 1, Auburn University: War on Hunger 2, Auburn University: War on Hunger 3, Universities Fighting World Hunger
Photo: Auburn