Inspiring BYU students to solve world hunger

The overarching message was one of hope, which is perhaps surprising for a forum on solving world hunger.
Sharon Eubank, director of Latter-day Saint Charities and a former member of the Relief Society general presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Barron Segar, president and CEO of World Food Program USA, spoke to a packed audience on the BYU Campus on Thursday night at a forum hosted by the Ballard Center for Social Impact.
Ballard Center Director Eva Witesman sat down with Eubank and Segar to talk about how collaboration between the two organizations assists those in need. The Church of Jesus Christ and the World Food Program have been working together for more than 10 years, in almost 50 countries.
Segar was forthright and said that the church’s support is “saving hundreds of millions of lives every year.”
“The church is our most important partner,” he said, reiterating what he said earlier this year when he was in Utah.
In addition to an aspirational message, he also shared stark data: One in every three people in the world faces food insecurity, over 300 million people are suffering from hunger and of those, 37 million are facing famine. Today, the No. 1 driver of hunger is war and conflict around the world. And, “as always,” Segar said, the most vulnerable are the hungriest, specifically women and children.
Eubank was asked why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has chosen hunger as a top priority. After spending several years researching what would make the biggest difference, Latter-day Saint leaders determined that focusing on birth to age 5 would have the most impact. Children need to survive birth and their mothers need to survive birth. They need access to clean water and enough nutritious food that their brains can develop appropriately during that critical five-year window, and then they need to get started at school.
Eubank and Segar also talked about local needs. There are hungry people in Provo, just as there are in Liberia. While there are differences, to be sure, there are also similarities: The people who live in each place have dreams and aspirations for themselves and for their children. Kids in Liberia dream of becoming teachers and doctors, engineers and police officers. The admonition to “love thy neighbor as thyself” applies equally to those close to us and those far away, they said.
Eubank was even more direct. “You are more important than you realize, right where you live,” she said. Often, she said, people think they need to travel internationally to be powerful in a humanitarian setting, but at home you speak the language, you know the culture and you can be involved in issues you care about every single day. What “gets me more excited than any foreign location,” she said, “is what we can do in our own communities.”
At the conclusion of the evening, Jill Piacitelli, associate director for the Ballard Center, and Rebecca Middleton, chief advocacy and engagement officer for World Food Program USA, took a few minutes to talk to BYU students about turning inspiration into action.
First of all, Middleton explained, there are at least three paths into having social impact. The first is a career in the field. The second is applying the lens of social impact to any job. And the third is being a person in the community. “There is something for everyone,” she said, and taking the first, small step can be transformational.
Piacitelli and Middleton shared three ways to get started. First, students were invited to learn and take action on the global hunger problem by going to a new initiative from the World Food Program, currently in its “soft launch” stage: Zero Hunger Generation.
Second, students were invited to get involved in their local community by searching for local service opportunities on the JustServe website.
Third, students were invited to participate in a Ballard Center “End Hunger” challenge to be completed by Oct. 16, World Food Day.
“I have a lot of hope,” said Eubank. The world is difficult and messy and it’s really hard, but its problems are not unsolvable. “To seek the interest of our neighbor is what we’re committed to,” she said.