HADLEY — Thousands of miles from home and staying in a country they describe as “cleaner” and “greener” than their own, a group of Pakistani students put on a food drive Wednesday to collect donated goods for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.
The students are staying at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored civic engagement trip. The program, called Pakistani Young Leaders, brings 29 students from different provinces of Pakistan to the U.S. for six weeks to learn about American culture and public policy. Their trip culminates in a community service project.
There are several other visiting groups from different countries working on different projects as part of Donahue Institute-sponsored programs. A group from Iraq, for example, hosted a cultural presentation Thursday at Bistro 63 in Amherst to benefit the town’s Senior Center.
The Pakistani group’s project centered on food insecurity, a problem that affects major segments of the population in both Pakistan and the United States.
“It’s an issue that both countries confront,” said Michael Hannahan, director of the Civic Initiative at the Donahue Institute in Hadley. “It’s good for people to come here and realize that everyone struggles with it,” he said.
Hannahan said the need for food is an issue the visiting students can appreciate across cultures.
Tanweer Makhani, 20, a student from the Pakistani province of Karachi, said that many Pakistanis look at the U.S. as a “utopia,” not realizing that there is a hunger problem in the country.
“It’s a dream for every Pakistani to visit the U.S.,” he said. “Everyone wants to explore it with their own eyes.”
The students met with U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Worcester, in Northampton and spent time at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts in Hatfield to learn more about hunger in the commonwealth. In the entire U.S., about 49 million people face food insecurity, meaning that they do not have reliable access to food that is both affordable and nutritious.
Western Massachusetts alone is home to about 211,000 of those struggling to make ends meet, according to the Donahue Institute.
Makhani has found that the U.S. and Pakistan deal with the issue of hunger very differently, however. In the U.S. there are a number of government-sponsored programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that helps qualifying families to buy food. As a result, American families do not receive as much support from non-governmental organizations, also called NGOs.
In contrast, the Pakistani government does not usually provide assistance to families, and that role is almost entirely filled by NGOs, such as the World Food Program of the United Nations.
“They’ll just make a hut and you can go and eat food there,” he said, adding that this is different from American food pantries in that you cannot take the food home.
Since food support generally comes from the government in the U.S., Makhani said that he now understands the importance of such food pantries. Knowing about the struggle that many people face just to be fed, he said he believes others have a responsibility to donate what they can to help those in need.
“I feel it’s our duty as privileged citizens,” he said. “We are investing our time so that we can leave better lives for people with food insecurity.”
“Small contributions matter,” he added. “It’s something special for us.”