This resource aims to raise awareness among children of the issues surrounding food insecurity in southern Africa. It was produced in response to the crisis in late 2005 to early 2006.

By looking at individuals affected by the food shortages in the region, this assembly kit will give young people an understanding of how these crises come about and how communities try to cope with them.

The main focus of the kit is the performance – a television programme, Behind the headlines, in which a panel of guests answer questions from viewers.

For a quick assembly, all you need to do is photocopy the script, decide who is going to play each of the five roles, then have a read through or rehearsal before the performance.

If you have the time, you can get more from the performance by including some of the add-ons. These will enhance your performance and develop a greater understanding of the issues.

The follow-up activities offer a range of simple activities suitable for exploring the issues in more depth in class after the assembly. Try to build in time for the reflection follow-up. This will give students time to explore the issues and ask their own questions.
 
The accompanying ten-minute briefing www.redcross.org.uk/fitmb provides teachers and other educators with background information on food insecurity. Please share this with colleagues.

This assembly kit is suitable for young people aged 11 to 16.

• To help young people gain a greater understanding of the key factors that prevent people from getting access to food.
• To help young people to see beyond the media images of starving millions waiting for food aid.
• To dispel the simplistic idea that food insecurity is simply due to drought and that food aid from richer countries is the solution.
• To help young people appreciate that media coverage takes places at a crisis point, but that people in some parts of the world face an ongoing struggle for food security.

The premise of the performance is a television programme looking at the current food insecurity crisis in southern Africa. The chair hosts the programme on which a panel of four answers questions from viewers.

• Red Cross food security adviser in Malawi, Juma Musopole (male)
• Isabel Kalima, aged 16, from Malawi
• Isabel’s grandmother, Sellina
• Keja Sapora, a (male) market trader from Malawi.

Decide who is going to play each role and distribute the scripts. Depending on your group, you may like a teacher to play the role of the chair.

You’ll want to go through the script with your group to make sure everyone is comfortable with the language and meaning and knows when to speak. If you have time, use the add-on activities to help prepare for the performance.

Chair
Good morning and welcome to Behind the Headlines.

Today we’re talking about the food crisis that’s affecting countries in southern Africa. Twelve million people are having to cope with serious food shortages. The next harvest will happen during March and April this year, but until then, people are struggling to get enough food to survive.

Our viewers have sent in their questions and I’ll be putting them to our guests to help us understand the situation in southern Africa.

Our guests on today’s panel, ready to answer our viewers' questions are Red Cross food security adviser in Malawi, Juma Musopole, Isabel Kalima, aged 16, from Malawi, accompanied by her grandmother, Sellina and Keja Sapora, a market trader also from Malawi.

So, let’s go straight to our first question to the panel.

Alice from Rugby wants to know why there isn’t any food in southern Africa. Keja?

Keja
Well, there is food in southern Africa – South Africa has plenty of maize. Some countries in the region had a good harvest, but in Malawi, for example, the maize harvest last March and April was terrible. The government imported extra maize, but it hasn’t been enough to keep everyone going.
 
I work in a market and there is food for sale there. The trouble is there isn’t very much food and there’s hardly any maize. Everyone wants and needs the food so the prices are very high. People simply don’t have the money to buy it. It’s out of their reach.

Chair
Jake from Newcastle says ‘If there is food, and you are hungry, why don't the people who have food just give it to you?’ Isabel?

Isabel
Are you serious? If you were homeless in London, would someone who had plenty of rooms just give you somewhere to live? I've heard that there are banks in the UK full of money. But there are also people living in poverty. No one suggests giving the banks’ money to the poor, do they?

Chair
Good point. Next is Kevin from Taunton. He says, ‘We have surplus food in Europe. Why don’t we just send it over to southern Africa?’ Juma?

Juma
People don’t need surplus food from Europe. Governments and aid agencies buy food from the region. We are working out who needs food most urgently and making sure these families get emergency food supplies.

But it’s a short-term plan. Ongoing food aid can make the problems worse.

Keja
Juma’s made a very important point. I don’t want the price of food in the market to go up and down constantly – it’s bad for traders like me and for buyers. If other countries kept sending in free food, the prices in the market would go down and farmers wouldn’t be able to make money.

Chair
Jamilla in Sevenoaks wants to know what has caused this crisis. Juma?

Juma
We’ve explained that the current crisis is because of food shortages, but people have been struggling with other factors that have made the lack of food particularly difficult to cope with.

The weather in the region means that there are often bad harvests and crops fail. There was a similar food crisis from 2001 to 2002 when people were pushed to their limits. Many had to get rid of their farm tools and even their animals in exchange for food. Communities have barely recovered from that before this next crisis has come along.

As well as this, one in four adults is suffering from HIV or AIDS. This means there are fewer people of working age, fewer farmers and health workers, and more orphaned children. Communities have been affected terribly by this, leaving them in a very vulnerable position to cope with food shortages.

Keja
Plus our economy isn’t strong at all, and our social services, like our healthcare, aren’t working as we’d like.

Chair
Lots of people have emailed wanting to understand the kind of problems you’re dealing with, Isabel. Can you tell us a bit about how you are coping?

Isabel
We’ve cut back by just eating one meal a day. The prices are too high to eat more often than that – so I’m always hungry.

I’ve had to stop going to school which I miss. The money for the school fees has to go towards food now.

Sellina
My worry is for our children’s future. I look after my six grandchildren, including Isabel. Their parents – my children – died of AIDS. It’s only me and Isabel who can bring food to the table. Isabel makes straw baskets to sell at the market but it’s not enough with food prices going up and up.

We’ll be selling our kitchen pots and tools next. Once they’re gone, that leaves only the animals – we hope we can hang on until the next harvest so we don’t have to sell them. That would be a disaster because we might never buy them back.

Juma
It’s important to remember all the different factors that have contributed to the crises, because otherwise there can be a tendency to blame the hungry people of Malawi themselves. We can get the idea that they passively wait around for help. Nothing could be more wrong.

Like other people from southern Africa, Malawians have tremendous survival skills. They will carefully calculate their needs and plan for the future. They have very difficult decisions to make. For instance, if things get really bad, a family may have to sell the animals they use for work because there isn’t enough food. But that will make life harder when the better harvest returns. And if they wait too long to sell, they may get a poor price, because everyone else is also selling and no one has food for animals.

Chair
Helen in Aberdeen asks ‘Why didn’t the international community do something sooner to prevent the crisis?’ Juma?

Juma
Unfortunately, it seems to take pictures of starving children on television before people start to donate money. By this stage it’s far too late to help many people.

Back in the summer of 2005, the United Nations launched an $88 million food appeal for Malawi, but ten days later had received not a single penny in pledges from other wealthy countries. Even now, in February 2006, the donations under the World Food Programme are still $23 million short – and that's after months of desperate suffering affecting many millions of Malawians.

Chair
Marcus from Brighton wants to know how people have been affected by HIV and AIDS. Sellina?

Sellina
Sadly, Isabel’s not alone. There are millions of orphans whose parents have died of AIDS.

The epidemic has affected people in so many ways. For instance, women are particularly good at finding wild food in the countryside. We have extensive knowledge, passed down through generations, of where to find wild berries and roots and what is safe to eat. But with so many deaths through HIV and AIDS, that life-saving knowledge is being lost, as mothers die before their children are old enough to learn the skills.

Chair
We’ve had lots of messages asking what help people need and what help people are getting.

Sellina
Right now, it’s food.

Isabel
Yes, that’ll keep us going until the harvest. But what happens after that? We need to feel this isn’t going to happen again and that we’ll be able to get hold of food without any problems in the future.

Juma
We aid agencies are getting the basics out as fast as possible – food and water to ensure the most vulnerable people make it to the next harvest.

In the long term, people also need emotional support as well as practical things like seeds and fertilisers, replacement tools, and even livestock.

Keja
Looking beyond the problems we have right now, I’d like to see economic stability.

Chair
And finally, some of the younger viewers have asked, ‘If you had one wish, what would it be?’ Isabel and Sellina, what would you say?

Isabel
I want to go back to school and study to become a nurse.

Sellina
I’d like to know my family will be safe and well after I’m gone.

Chair
Thank you all for coming here today to tell us about your lives and your experience of living through a food crisis.

I wonder how we would cope in the UK in similar circumstances? Imagine what would happen to you in the UK if the price of food rocketed – to perhaps a hundred times what it had been. Then think that at the same time you had only a tenth of the money you used to have. You would get hungry pretty quickly. What would you do?

End of performance
 

Pick one or several of the add-ons to incorporate into the performance. They’ll give your assembly extra impact so you and your students will get more out of the experience. Think about the students in your group or audience and choose ideas that will suit them.

Character study add-on
Spend some time thinking and talking about each character to help students get into their role. Ask students to think about

• what each character’s daily life is like
• where they live
• what type of food they eat
• what their hopes and fears are
• their emotions and feelings about their situation
• how they might feel about being a guest on this show.

Ask students to consider how each of these characters' motivations, feelings and circumstances can be conveyed on stage. Working in pairs, ask them to experiment using different gestures, intonation, changes in pace and body language.

Drama add-on
The character study add-on can be extended to explore each character’s actions and reactions. Ask students to imagine they are in the green room waiting to go on stage. Briefly discuss how each character may be feeling and what they may do and say to each other in the 15 minutes prior to the start.

Put students in groups of five, with each student taking a role. Set the scene and ask students to improvise.

Prop add-on
A simple way for students to get into character is through the use of carefully chosen props. These will also help the audience remember who’s who on the panel.

Spend some time discussing what each character should wear or carry as a prop. You could make these or look for images on the internet to place in front of the panel members.

Image add-on
Use newspaper cuttings to provide a backdrop to the ‘programme’. Gather together a selection of newspaper cuttings and headlines from recent articles on the topic and project a collage onto the back of the stage. 
 

These follow-up activities can be used after the assembly to explore some of the issues in more depth. You might use these directly after the assembly, or as a way to come back to the topic later in the term.

Reflection follow-up
The characters in the script are based on real case studies so you can use the information from the script to look in more depth at the issues.

Give students a copy of the script. Ask them to find an example or examples of each of the following in the script:

• causes of food insecurity 
• consequences of food insecurity 
• short-term help 
• long-term help

Collate the answers on the board. Did students have trouble deciding which were causes and which consequences? Discuss this as a group.

Comparison follow-up
Discuss the chair’s closing question. Guide students to consider the support systems available to people in the UK when faced with problems such as loss of income compared to those available to many people living in southern Africa. What would happen if we were faced with a similar set of circumstances?

Media follow-up
Ask students to find media coverage of the crisis. You can make it as broad as is practical – on the internet, in national newspapers and on television – assigning different groups to different media.

Draw the results together and discuss whether students feel there was too much, too little or the right amount of coverage.

Next, ask students to imagine that they are an international journalist who’s been given the task of reporting on food insecurity in southern Africa.

Explain that the space in the newspaper is limited. Ask them to organise their thoughts by first listing the key messages and then prioritising them. Look back at the findings from the reflection follow-up or use the ten-minute briefing to guide them.