GEM NO. 163

Using World Food Day as a Teaching Tool Judith C. Byrne, Ed.D., R .D., Department of Home Economics, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809; (812) 237-3309.

World Food Day is celebrated annually on, or near, October 16 as a commemoration of the founding of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (1). Each year World Food Day highlights a special aspect of the world food situation, and local groups are encouraged to tailor activities re­lated to World Food Day to the needs and interest of their community.

A university Community Nutrition course can readily accommodate the concepts sur­rounding World Food Day, and a commu­nity event can be staged as a class project, developed and implemented · by the stu­dents. At Indiana State University we intro­duce students to World Food Day using the Catechism (1) developed by The National Committee for World Food Day. The cur­rent year's topic is then discussed, using the World Food Day Concept Paper (2). The students are given specific roles to play in developing their World Food Day project, including those of Facilitator, Publicist, Content Specialist, and Organizer. Guide­lines are given and the students' progress is checked at regular intervals.

An important aspect of this project is to include other people from the University and the community in the commemoration. The community group we invite to participate is the West Central Indiana District Dietetic Association. Members who attend the scheduled event can acquire continuing ed­ucation credit for dOing so. Selected de­partments on campus are indiVidually noti­fied, while general publication for the event is handled through advertisements in the student newspaper and descriptive flyers posted at strategic locations around campus.

A number of international students are usually enrolled in the Department of Home Economics. Their unique perspective, re­flecting their cultural background, can lend an enriching diverSity to the project.

Our 1989 event will be used to illustrate the implementation of this project. The theme was Food, Enoironment and Devel­opment (3). While researching the journals and newsletters for support material, the students learned about the House of Rep­resentatives' Select Committee on Hunger and tJalnutrition, and the work of the late Mickey Leland, who had been its chairman (4). The students were so impressed with Representative Leland's involvement in the cause of alleViating hunger that they decided to dedicate the 1989 World Food Day activ­ity to his memory.

One student was appointed Facilitator and saw to it that deadlines were met by the group. Each student in the project was re­quired to locate two pertinent articles relat­ing to the world food situation and to present this information in the form of an annotated bibliography. The Content Specialist orga­nized these individual bibliographies into the reading resource list fur the participants. The Organizer developed a brochure lU)d a flyer that explained the project's theme. She

Figure 1. Community Nutrition class students with some of the materials produced for World Food Day.

posted the brochure, flyer and other graphic material relevant to World Food Day in the display alcove in the Home Economics Building. The Publicist mailed copies of the annotated bibliography and brochure to lo­cal dietitians to enable them to prepare for the journal/discussion phase of the project. The Publicist also contacted ·the campus newspaper for coverage. All of the students working on the project distributed the flyers around campus and delivered the brochures to the Departments of SOCiology, Econom­ics, Political Science, Life Sciences and the School of Nursing.

The actual presentation lasted two hours. The students used visual aids, such as the videotape of the World Food Day Satellite Teleconference, to supplement their oral presentation. The participants, who in­cluded some of the local dietitians, faculty members, and university students, were en­couraged to, and did, interact with the stu­dent panelists.

As a result of this experience, the students learned the importance of cooperation .in putting on a World Food Day event; they produced an annotated bibliography, a bro­chure and a flyer, and conducted the pres­entation. Their concepts of hunger, food se­curity, the world food situation, chronic malnutrition and corporate responsibility were broadened when viewed in a global context. The hunger affecting millions around the world became more real to them, and this awareness carried over to other assign­ments that were part of the course. Reading about current food and nutrition policies and legislation in sources such as CNI's Nutrition Week, the ADA Legislmive Newsletter, Seeds, Nutrition Action, etc., is an integral part of the Community Nutrition class. The interest sparked by the World Food Day activity was reflected in the articles subsequently se­lected for class reports. From the interna­tional focus of World Food Day the students then turned to an exploration of national and

local policies and programs that deal with food security.

The multi-dimensional aspects of this project reflected the multi-dimensional as­pects of World Food Day, and taught the students that many factors affect world food security.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

World Food Day Catechism. The National Committee for World Food Day. 1001 22nd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20437, 1989.

2 1989 World Food Day Teleconference Concept Paper . The National Committee for World Food Day. 1001 22nd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20437, 1989.

3 Food, Environment, and Development. Study/Action Packet prepared for World Food Day, 1989. The National Committee for World Food Day. 1001 22nd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20437, 1989.

4 Crawford, L. Mickey Leland: Fighting hunger from Capital Hill. Seeds, July/AU­gust 1989, pp. 6-11.

JOURNAL OF NUTRITION EDUCATION 23:2608, 1991