Hosting a "What’s for Dinner?" Party

The general idea with this dinner party is to show visually, with food, the disparities in caloric intake between resource-scarce developing countries and resource-rich developed countries, along with the disparities in aid given to developing countries by donor countries. You will serve each guest the equivalent amount of food that the average person in a chosen country would receive on a daily basis. Then for dessert, they will receive the same amount of dessert based on how much aid a chosen donor country gives. Here’s how to get started:

• After answering the above questions you will have a better idea about where to get started for this dinner party. You should know how many people you will invite and how many people will attend.
• For this dinner party, you will need a large quantity of food based on the theme of the dinner. For example: if you choose to have Mexican, make a large quantity of rice, if you choose Italian, make a large quantity of pasta, etc.
• You might want to set up your dinner party buffet style as this will be easiest to serve your guests during and after the presentation.
• Use the country pairs found below, write them down on index cards and distribute to your guests as they sit down to dinner. Be sure to tell them not to share which countries they have!
• Now as host/ess, serve the main portion of the meal (rice, pasta) out to guests based on the first country on that person’s note card. For example, if the country is Madagascar, the average caloric intake per person per day in Madagascar is 2000 – 2300 calories. You would then serve the rice or pasta to cover approximately 40% of your guest’s plate. If the country were the U.S., with an average caloric intake per person per day of over 3200 calories, you would fill up your guest’s plate all the way plus a little extra, equaling 120%.

• After you have filled up your guests' plates according to their first country, start a discussion. Ask them what they think this all represents? Go around the table and have everyone share their first country (still keeping the second one a secret!) After some speculative discussion go ahead and reveal the relationship between the amount of food on their plate to the plight of average people in that particular country.
• Serve the main course. During dinner ask people’s thoughts on the differing amounts of food people per country get on a daily basis. What are the implications? What do you think an average meal would look like in each country? How much money do you think one would spend on food? Who do you think grows/gathers/prepares the food? Do you think it is the same or different for each country? What resources do you think are used in each country to prepare the food?

For dessert, the discussion will take place around development assistance. The international community has agreed that in order to help advance developing countries and help eliminate poverty, donor countries would give 0.7% of their gross national product (GNP) to development assistance.

• For this part of the discussion, serving several small cookies works best.
• Look at your guests’ second country on their card and give out the corresponding amount of cookies per that country’s commitment to development assistance. For example, for Switzerland you hand out 3 cookies; for the Netherlands, 8.

• Ask your guests, after all the dessert is handed out, what they think this represents? Go around the table and have everyone share their second country. What are the biggest differences between the first country and second country? What are the differences between high calorie countries and the amount of aid that is given? Were you surprised that the US gives so little toward development assistance compared to other donor countries?