UN Hunger Expert to Help Launch ‘Fighting World Hunger’ Chapter at UMaine
The University of Maine Cooperative Extension will celebrate the fall launch a Maine chapter of international Universities Fighting World Hunger with a presentation by Douglas Casson Coutts, Distinguished Visiting Professor at Auburn University on loan from the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP).
Coutts will present “Local and World Hunger: How They Are Linked and How the University of Maine Community Can Make a Difference” on Wednesday, Sept. 21 at 6:30 p.m. in Buchanan Alumni House on the Orono campus. Members of the UMaine and surrounding communities are invited to the free and public event.
A unique academic partnership between WFP and Auburn University, Universities Fighting World Hunger (UFWH) is an international coalition of educational institutions devoted to addressing the growing concerns related to food insecurity and poverty.
Coutts, based at Auburn University for the past three years, he has created a minor in hunger studies and has helped Auburn establish an extensive interdisciplinary and campus-wide student organization committed to the mission of UFWH. His outreach efforts have inspired a nationwide coalition of campuses to establish UFWH chapters at more than 170 institutions.
Coutts will discuss how the UFWH can make a difference at the campus level, within local communities and around the world, and how the Cooperative Extension at UMaine is engaging the campus and surrounding communities in the growing coalition. In his keynote, Coutts will describe the commonality between rural low-income people in the United States in times of disaster such as hurricanes and the vulnerability of billions of the world’s poorest people.
According to Barbara Murphy, Cooperative Extension educator in the Oxford County office in South Paris and coordinator of the successful Maine Harvest for Hunger Program, there are increasing numbers of reasons why UMaine should create a UFWH chapter. They include the global rise in food insecurity, and that hunger and food insecurity is a high priority with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
A local chapter will enable UMaine and local partners to become part of an international coalition trying to make a difference, encourage collaboration across disciplines and engage students in activism, she says.
In addition to delivering a keynote address, Coutts will be available to the broader UMaine campus on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 20-22.
UMaine community members can make arrangements for a visit to campus organizations or departments, where he can engage students by guest-lecturing or hosting discussions, according to the needs of the course curriculum or organization’s needs, says Murphy.
Ways in which educators can become involved include sponsoring hunger awareness events, conducting research projects, adding hunger and poverty themes to classes, establishing campus kitchens and engaging students in service opportunities.
For more information visit the UFWH website (www.universitiesfightingworldhunger.org), the World Food Programme website (www.wfp.org) or the Auburn University “War on Hunger” Website.
Murphy can be reached for information at (207) 743-6329, 1-800-287-1482 (toll free in Maine) or e-mail: barbara.murphy@maine.edu.