UBC students Neetu Garcha, left, and Odd Gleditsch are heading to a global conference focused on fighting hunger.
UBC students Odd Gleditsch and Neetu Garcha will represent UBC's Okanagan campus at the Summit of Universities Fighting World Hunger (UFWH), taking place Feb. 25 to 27 in Guelph, Ontario.
Supported by the United Nations World Food Program, UFWH is an international organization focused on sustainable human development. The sixth-annual summit, with the theme “Hunger has no boundaries,” will be the first held in Canada and the first outside the United States.
"I think it is important for us as students to keep a focus on this issue, which is one of the world's biggest problems," says Gleditsch, a third-year international relations student. "I hope to learn new ways to empower and motivate students here. The fact is you don't have to go somewhere to make a difference; we can make a difference from our campus."
Garcha and Gleditsch plan to take a camcorder and make a short documentary of their experience. In addition to their goals of leading new hunger-fighting initiatives on campus that protect the natural environment and enhance human health, they hope to get UBC's Okanagan campus to officially join the coalition of more than 70 universities world-wide in the fight against hunger with the UFHW organization.
"I would like to bring back some of the ideas we brainstorm and use them as a force for driving change here -- perhaps at a student political level," says Garcha, a third-year Bachelor of Management student and incoming external coordinator with the UBC Students’ Union Okanagan. "This is an exciting opportunity to network with students at other universities around the world to better understand the issue of world hunger and what we can all do to unite and confront it."
For more information on the UFWH Summit visit http://www.uoguelph.ca/worldhunger/.
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