As students crowd their plates with pounds of food this week in campus dining halls, Northwestern Community Development Corps will challenge diners to examine the effects of wasted food on the international community.

NCDC’s Hunger Awareness Week, kicking off Monday with a food weigh-in at Norris University Center and Sargent, Allison and Foster-Walker dining halls, will focus on spreading world hunger information, said NCDC executive board member Joe Curnow, an Education junior.

During the weigh-in, held at Allison’s dining hall for lunch and Sargent’s dining hall for dinner, NCDC officials will weigh diners’ trash to demonstrate how much food students waste daily.

“We just want to show that if you don’t take (too much) food, that food can then be repackaged and reused,” said Scott Wolf, NCDC co-chairman and an Education junior.

This year represents NCDC’s first Hunger Awareness Week. In the past the organization held a weeklong poverty awareness program that incorporated the issue of hunger.

Curnow said she organized this year’s events as a part of a pilot program with the U.N. World Food Program.

In addition to the food weigh-in, students can participate in a hunger banquet Wednesday, a letter-writing campaign Tuesday and Wednesday and a day of fasting Friday.

On Monday, Tufts University Prof. Ellen Messer will deliver the week’s keynote speech. Messer is a nutritionist who researches and prepares reports for the United Nations about food shortages in developing countries, Curnow said.

Wolf said NCDC teamed with the Korean American Student Association for a new event — “Rice at The Rock.” The groups will give bags of rice to students Wednesday to remind them of the hunger problem lingering in many parts of Asia.

NCDC leaders encountered problems coordinating Friday’s day of fasting after university officials refused to approve a plan to donate money saved in the dining halls to a hunger organization, Curnow said.

NU traditionally makes a donation each quarter to the Greater Chicagoland Food Depository in the name of students, so it won’t make smaller donations at the request of individual organizations, Curnow said she was told by Garth Miller, director of university housing and food services.

Wolf said students still can fast to increase their awareness of food’s importance.

Increasing awareness is the main goal of the whole week, organizers said.

“You don’t hear about the millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa who die of hunger each day, ” Curnow said. “You don’t hear about it in the media.”