At-home and at school learning resources from Learning for a Sustainable Future
Fall Week 6: Zero Hunger
This week's theme focuses on UN Sustainable Development Goal #2, Zero Hunger. Currently, the UN estimates that 690 million people, around 8% of the world's population, are hungry. Many factors, such as climate change, economic conditions, and man-made conflicts, all play a role in leading to this unfortunate number. The COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened this situation by putting an additional 130 million people at risk of acute hunger by the end of 2020. The Zero Hunger goal hopes to eliminate world hunger by the year 2030 and ensure that all people, regardless of their situation, have access to sufficient, safe, and healthy food all year round!

This week's LIO focuses on resources and activities that help students learn about the various food systems in the developing world, and shed light on the social and economic situations that many people face that impact their access to safe and healthy food. Many of these activities could also be used to help mark World Food Day on October 16th - Learn more about the R4R #HotTopic, World Food Day, and how to get involved here.
SDG 2 Zero Hunger aims to end hunger and provide access to healthy food for everyone. There are many reasons why people can’t afford enough food: a family might lose their harvest in a storm or parents without a job can’t go to the supermarket to buy food for their children. Here are a few books we encourage you to read to your students and hope they will inspire your class to take action for a world with zero hunger. 


In this story, a woman is headed to the market with her son to spend her meager wages on ingredients to make pancakes for supper. Along the way, amid her son’s excitement, he invites all of the people he meets to dine with them. The woman is concerned that there will not be enough food for everyone who her son has invited.

This picture book is based on the true story of a young Ugandan girl and her family who benefit from the gift of a goat.  Beatrice is told that the goat is a lucky gift, which proves true as the goat can provide increased wealth and the ability to provide for the family.  Beatrice is finally able to attend school in the small village as well. The author depicts the positive change that only a few animals can make in the sustainability of a community.

This book poignantly deals with the issues of poverty, hunger and malnutrition. The main character does not have access to nutritious lunches, and so makes the choice to steal lunches from those around him. One particular victim discovers what the boy is doing and reaches out to him by offering to share his own lunch and friendship.


Activities
  • Move your story time outside! Expand the limits of your reading circle to include the great outdoors by reading these books to your students in the schoolyard
  • Read Beatrice’s Goat or listen online
  • Read Mama Panya’s Pancakes or listen online
  • Read The Lunch Thief or listen online
  • Learn more about Food Heroes – the importance of our food systems, who produces our food and where it comes from 
  • Become a Zero Hunger Citizen by doing your part and helping us to achieve our goal by 2030
  • Watch this video about Food Heroes and actions you can take so you can become one too!
  • Be inspired by the World Food Day Activity Book! Learn about the important role food heroes play in the food system and how everyone can come together and take action to support our food heroes so they can provide the healthy diets we need while protecting the planet
  • Write about your Favourite Food Hero
  • Enter your Food Hero in the World Food Day poster contest
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The Global Schools Program aims to teach students about the origin of food, the systems that distribute it and how it impacts the lives of people around the world. Students will use their own lunch to discuss the origins of their food, where it comes from, and relate their meals to issues of poverty and hunger worldwide.


Activities
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A very engaging resource package that will focus the attention of young learners on the issue of food security.  Through discussions and activities based on stories told by three children from developing nations, students will learn the different reasons why people go hungry around the world and what steps might be taken to address the problem.
 
Activities
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Through a simulation activity, students experience the challenges, decisions, choices, and impacts that subsistence farmers in the developing world face. In village groups, students decide which crops they will plant over two seasons, during which time there are randomly assigned dry and wet years.





Activities
  • Discussion questions - What are some of the challenges that subsistence farmers face in growing enough food to feed their families? What are the root causes of hunger and poverty, and how can they be addressed sustainably? 
  • Research and write a paper or create a brochure about a developing world country, focusing on its food security and agricultural practices
  • Define your “foodshed” by finding out what foods are grown in your region
  • Team up with a local food bank to develop a cookbook that includes tasty and nutritious recipes using the ingredients commonly found at the food bank
  • Play Breaking the Cycle of Hunger game to gain insight into what causes hunger and what can help break the cycle of hunger
  • Get outside and complete A Divided World, an awareness activity that demonstrates how the world’s food is divided globally and how this inequality impacts people
  • Help support a local effort to reduce hunger. School feeding programs, foodbanks and local charities are great ways to get involved. Find out what’s happening in your community and get on board
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Learn how climate change has affected agriculture and how steps can be taken to preserve our ability to sustainably produce food for our planet. To achieve food security in a changing climate the global community must operate within three limits: the quantity of food that can be produced under a given climate, the amount needed by a growing and changing population, and the effect of food production on the climate. At present, the planet operates outside that safe space, as witnessed by the enormous number of undernourished people. If current trends in population growth, diets, crop yields, and climate change continue, the world will still be outside this safe operating space in 2050.

Activities
  • Post viewing discussion questions: 1. Think about the food that you ate today. Do you know how or where it was produced? 2. What effects might food production have on the environment?
  • Write a persuasive argument on How to Feed the World in 2050
  • How aware are you of the Food Security in the North issue? Learn more about how access to healthy, affordable food for residents in remote, northern communities is extremely restrictive. Take a stance on whether enough is being done by our respective governmental bodies to address the issue, or whether the issue of Food Security in the Canadian north will continue to persist due to the remote geographic location of these communities and logistical barriers for companies to price food at a more affordable price
  • Be a voice for ending world hunger - Write a letter to your MP! Let your member of Parliament know that you care about global hunger and that you want Canada to increase its effort to overcome it
  • Participate in Just Food Art. Create a piece of art or creative writing based on an emotional and intellectual response to issues around hunger, food and human rights. We’d love to hear from you! Share your art with us at #LearningInsideOut
  • Help support a local effort to reduce hunger. School feeding programs, foodbanks and local charities are great ways to get involved. Find out what’s happening in your community and get on board
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About Learning Inside Out

Above you will find a selection of activities, broken down by various grade levels. These guides will be released weekly and archived on our Learning Inside Out page, so you can always access the full catalogue.

All activities have been modified from resources on our R4R database, simplified and adapted for both outdoor learning in the school yard or at-home as needed. The activity descriptions below should contain all the information and links that you need!

If you'd like to view the full original resource on R4R, including curriculum connections for every province/territory, click the activity title.

We want this guide to work for you, so your feedback is invaluable to us.
Use the feedback button at the bottom of this Guide, or email us at info@LSF-LST.ca. We would also love to see photos of students engaging in the activities, please e-mail us any pictures or videos you have!
Let us know how this helped your learning and teaching from home or at school indoors and (hopefully) outdoors and what you'd like to see more of by filling out our brief feedback form!
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Please share widely with any parents and teachers in your life!
Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF) is a Canadian charity with over 25 years of experience working within the education system. Our Resources for Rethinking (R4R) database is an award-winning collection of resources that are peer-reviewed by certified teachers and connected to curriculum in all provinces and territories. R4R is recommended on many Ministry of Education websites.
Learning for a Sustainable Future
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