After treating lepers in India and teaching third-graders in Uzbekistan, 23-year-old Jessica Jackson turned her attention to Allison dining hall.
Jackson, the leader of the Campus Kitchens Project at Northwestern, aims to use leftover food at Allison Hall to feed impoverished Evanston residents starting Fall Quarter.
“You go to the west side of Evanston and people are so poor,” Jackson told 27 people Tuesday night in University Hall. “You wonder how neighborhoods get that bad.”
Jackson told NU students about her experiences with poverty while in the Peace Corps in India and Uzbekistan. She appeared as part of Northwestern Community Development Corps’ Poverty Awareness Week, encouraging students to contribute to their communities.
“College could be such a great place because everyone wants to learn,” she said. “You can take advantage of this community while you have it.”
The NU community will be the second location for Jackson’s organization, which started at St. Louis University in Missouri. The organization donates the extra food from college cafeterias to charities that feed the hungry in the community.
While working with the poor in other countries, Jackson said she learned that American pop culture shows an oversimplified view of world poverty.
“This is the stuff that you see on the Sally Struthers commercials,” Jackson said while showing pictures of humanitarian aid advertisements.
“It’s like: ‘Look at this starving baby. Feed it and give it your money and you can go back to playing (Sony) Playstation or whatever you do,'” she said.
Through her work, Jackson said she has learned that poor people are regular citizens and often don’t look like the starving children in those commercials. She said she worried that stereotypes make Americans feel removed from poverty.
“It just makes poor people seem so ‘other’ from us,” Jackson said. “Helping poor people try to ameliorate poverty should be a matter of helping the people improve their situations rather than giving handouts.”
Jackson said students can help lessen poverty by becoming more educated, working with the impoverished and taking social action against poverty, but she said it’s important to remember that each person can have only a limited effect on fighting poverty.
“I don’t feel like I have a huge effect on anyone in the world,” Jackson said. “I’m just me. I’m just one person.”
Mickey Heynen, a McCormick senior, was optimistic that Jackson’s project would help improve conditions in the Evanston area.
“I know just by the sheer magnitude of the problem, and equally, the amount of food available, that if done properly, it can help,” Heynen said.
Other events in NCDC’s Poverty Awareness Week will include:
_Ѣ a coffeehouse performance at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Unicorn Cafe, 1723 Sherman Ave., to benefit the Campus Kitchens Project;
_Ѣ a clothing drive Thursday at The Rock; and
_Ѣ a weeklong candy giveaway at The Rock where students are being asked to sign a postcard to Illinois Gov. George Ryan in support of the cause.
