Click here to register your school to participate in the 2008 Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week.

We will only eradicate hunger and homelessness by building a movement from the ground up - a movement comprised of a diverse population that demands an end to these unnecessary social ills. By educating the public and future decision-makers, the National Student Campaign builds awareness that will help dismantle stereotypes and misinformation about homelessness, hunger, and the root causes of poverty. Once individuals have a better understanding of these problems, they are inspired to take action by volunteering, donating funds or resources, writing to their local newspaper, or calling their member of Congress. Each action brings us one step closer to ending hunger and homelessness.

In 1972, students at Villanova University in Pennsylvania recognized the power of education and held the first Hunger Week. This week of coordinated activities has since become the most widely organized hunger and homelessness event on campuses nationwide. Co-sponsored by the National Coalition for the Homeless and held the week prior to Thanksgiving, Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week consists of a series of events designed to educate the campus community, increase community service, and build campus and community coalitions. More than 500 campuses and communities participate during this week each year by organizing educational programs, fasts and sleep outs, community service events, letter-writing campaigns, and congressional call-in days.

Download a radio PSA you can use for publicizing an on-campus sleepout

Dartmouth College's Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week:
Despite its location nestled in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where students are rarely faced with the reality of hunger and homelessness, Dartmouth College has taken great steps in becoming a leading campus in the national student movement to end hunger and homelessness. Sponsored by the William Jewett Tucker Foundation, Dartmouth students organize Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week every fall. The week of educational events, volunteer opportunities, and fundraising drives sparks broadening campus support, innovative program ideas, and growing student leadership each year. Dartmouth's 2005 Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week featured a Run for Hunger, Rock Out for Habitat for Humanity benefit concert, Faces of Homelessness in the Upper Valley panel discussion, Oxfam Hunger Banquet, Sleep Out for Awareness, film screening of Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and a Volunteer Action Day that mobilized five groups of student volunteers at homeless shelters and housing projects throughout the state of New Hampshire.

Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week at Dartmouth College doesn't end there. The week also ran in conjunction with a new internationally focused hunger program, entitled Dartmouth Ends Hunger (DEH). Dartmouth Ends Hunger was founded in spring 2005 to combine food insecurity education with fundraising and advocacy for sustainable international poverty relief. The program has run for one week both in spring and fall 2005, during which students, faculty and staff at Dartmouth College gather together for simple meals of rice and beans, while receiving sponsorships from student groups, campus departments, and Greek houses. The 2005 Dartmouth Ends Hunger week saw over one-hundred students, faculty and staff cook or attend meals. Dartmouth College partners with an area university in Siuna, Nicaragua and together Dartmouth Ends Hunger has raised several thousand dollars to support sustainable farming efforts in the poverty stricken campesinos of Siuna, Nicaragua. Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week and Dartmouth Ends Hunger have boosted campus involvement in hunger and homelessness issues to a larger scale than ever before and provide a model to which other campuses can look for ideas and support.