About This Lesson
The success of the world’s smallholder farmers – about 500 million of them, supporting more than 2 billion people while working just a couple of acres of land or less – is critical if we are to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, ending hunger and malnutrition. In this lesson, the stories of four smallholder families in western Kenya featured in Roger Thurow’s The Last Hunger Season book come to life in a series of short films. Roger narrates the films, which were produced by filmmakers Joshua Courter and Giulia Longo while Roger was reporting the book. Students will hear directly from the farmers and their children as they battle to overcome the annual Hunger Season, which they call Wanjala. Roger also narrates an interactive photo powerpoint that follows one of the families beyond the timeframe of the book, illustrating the great life-changing potential of their work. There is an overriding lesson throughout all these stories: If these smallholder farmers succeed in conquering their Hunger Seasons, so might we all succeed in achieving the great goal of Zero Hunger in our world.
