World Food Day: October 16, 2012

World Food Day is a great opportunity for students and teachers to understand more about global approaches to ending hunger. This year’s theme is “Agricultural cooperatives—key to feeding the world”. Observing the day as a school or individual classroom is one of the best ways to raise awareness about food instability and other food-related issues like malnutrition. Don’t be intimidated if you don’t know where to start!

Words such as hunger, malnutrition, food instability, agriculture, and cooperative can be difficult to describe and define for children and adults—this is because they encompass a wide variety of topics and are interrelated. It’s best to define these to students as concepts. Concept-mapping is an essential first step in helping to establish why World Food Day is important and how it applies to a student’s life directly. When a child can see that hunger, malnutrition and agriculture impact their life on a daily basis they are better able to recall and retain that information. And that’s the first step toward making a difference!

Download a free classroom guide with directions for creating a concept map with your students developed by the National Gardening Association and Oxfam America.