Fall 2003, Volume 9 Number 1

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California Students Take The Hunger Challenge

By Kerry Ruetenik

Though filled to capacity with ninety middle and high school students, the largest auditorium of the World Affairs Council of Northern California was quiet, save for the soft scratching of pencils on paper.  Here and there, a head tipped back as a student scanned the ceiling, searching for an answer to one of the tougher questions.  A few volunteer proctors strolled between the rows of tables, scanning the room for errant hands or bits of paper.  The room remained completely hushed until one by one, the students rose, passed their papers to a proctor, and left the auditorium quickly.  And so, while many young people began their Saturday with cereal and cartoons, the competitors of San Francisco’s 2003 World Affairs Challenge^TM began their Saturday with a quiz. 

Administered by the Center for Teaching International Relations (CTIR) at the University of Denver, the World Affairs Challenge is an academic competition that brings students head-to-head with some of today’s most daunting global problems.  San Francisco was the first expansion site for CTIR, supported by a partnership with the United Nations Foundation. While previous years’ topics have been World Health and Water, this year’s global issue was World Hunger.  By pitting local youth against our planet’s toughest problems, the creators of the Challenge have sought to match the energy and idealism of adolescence with the poverty and degradation that plagues communities the world over.  While expectations are high and the potential for disappointment great, students typically rise to the pressure of the moment, often with startling and provocative results.

2003 World Affairs Challenge competitors were asked to compete in 4 categories--the Quiz, the Discovery Poster, the Collaborative Question, and the Formal Presentation.  Students had up to ten weeks to prepare for the event, many of them dedicating lunchtime hours to their work.  With hands-off assistance from teachers and Challenge coaches, the students were encouraged to search for creative and practical solutions to global problems, rather than dwell upon the negative, as less-proactive projects are prone to do.

The students who convened in San Francisco came from various racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds.  Many approached this event without a profound understanding of world hunger, and yet the Challenge provided them with an opportunity to grapple with these weighty issues in a meaningful way.  Students were drawn to the program for different reasons, including the creative and performative aspects of the event.  To that effect, the participants brought many unique talents to the table.  Madiha Murshed, Executive Director of Project Spera, the organizational host of the 2003 Challenge, notes, “One great thing about the Challenge, that sets it apart from other competitions, is that it attracts students from non-traditional backgrounds.  We have students who would not typically participate in an extra-curricular academic event, who are drawn instead to the subject matter of world hunger or who are interested in designing the Discovery Poster or a creative aspect of the Formal Presentation.”

One element of the Challenge that elicited much positive student feedback was the Collaborative Question (the CQ).  In this project, students were assigned to groups consisting of youth from different schools--an arrangement designed to encourage cooperation.  Each student group was given a hypothetical assignment to distribute five categories of monetary aid based on statistical and issue-based characterizations of three different developing countries.  The students had thirty minutes to discuss the needs and differences of the three nations, and twenty minutes to present and justify their choices to a panel of judges. 

As a volunteer at the Challenge, I was assigned to help administer some of the CQ’s.  Faced with a group of jittery middle schoolers, newly seated at a long conference table for their first CQ event, I tried to encourage them to remain calm.  Meanwhile, I browsed the materials and wondered how capable I would be in this event.  Which nation was more deserving of immediate aid--Burundi, where the average life expectancy at birth is 46 years, Bangladesh, where the average daily wage for the most workers is equivalent to eighty cents, or Vietnam, which has the highest child malnutrition rate in East Asia and the Pacific region?

For many, the CQ element of the Challenge proved to be extraordinarily validating, as the pressure to collaborate culminated in a series of focused questions from professional and highly educated judges.  While some students were not up to the task of a detailed defense, many of them appreciated the fact that the judges were intently concerned with their responses.  One student wrote, “My ideas and theories were listened to and that gave me an incredible feeling of accomplishment… I felt like I could propose any solution and people would actually listen.”

As I watched the students defend their solutions to the CQ, I observed their reactions to the pressure of the moment.  Some young people withdrew, becoming even shyer, while others grew more outspoken, jumping in to respond first to the judges’ questions.  Part of the grading criteria for this event, however, demanded an evenly collaborative approach to the platform.  In one middle school group, a young man who disagreed with the consensus of his peers interrupted his group’s presentation several times to interject his own opinion.  The judges requested his solution to the CQ, which he gave, until he became stumped by a question on Vietnam.  His group continued the presentation and suddenly he exclaimed, “Vietnam is a country? I thought it was just a war. That’s why these numbers were confusing!”  The other students giggled, but continued presenting.  Ultimately, each student gleaned something different from his or her experience in the competition. 

In the context of student remarks about their experience in the Challenge, the events of May 31, 2003 gave participants a remarkable opportunity to move beyond the walls of their schools and communities, to learn about their roles in the global community and to accept a small portion of the responsibility that comes with greater knowledge of the world.  The members of host organization Project Spera look forward to working with the 2004 participants as they prepare for the next Northern California Challenge, location to be announced.

Kerry Ruetenik is an intern with Project Spera and was involved in the planning of the World Affairs Challenge^TM. She holds an undergraduate degree in English from UC Berkeley and has traveled widely. She currently resides in Alameda, California. For more information on the World Affairs Challenge in San Francisco, please visit www.projectspera.org.

Project Spera is a San Francisco-based educational nonprofit whose mission is to raise youth's awareness about international affairs. Project Spera runs two programs: the Global Citizenship After-school Program (of which the World Affairs Challenge is a component) and a Professional Development Program for teachers.             

   Learn about Project Spera at www.projectspera.org or 415-292-7421 or info@projectspera.org. 

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