Sounds peculiar at first.You attend a charity banquet with a friend. Maybe you paid to get in. Maybe you didn't. Your friend gets a full meal at a linen-clothed table while you sit on the floor and share a bowl of rice with strangers.

Not fair?

That's the point.

It's called a hunger banquet. And this symbolic event has become an increasingly popular way to educate people about world hunger — and often solicit donations.

The concept was originally conceived by aid and development organization Oxfam. Each year, especially during the giving yet gluttonous holiday season, Oxfam says the number of hunger banquets across the U.S. has grown dramatically.

Outreach manager Nancy Delaney is't quite sure how the 30-year-old idea developed. She knows a staff member came up with the hunger banquet concept to support Fast for a World Harvest, the organization's campaign that's asked people to skip a meal and donate the money saved to Oxfam since 1974.

Here are three other things you should know about hunger banquets:

1. You may not be alone.

Through letters, donations and word of mouth, Delaney is aware of more than 700 hunger banquets that have occurred this year. She excepts that number to rise to 1,000 by year's end.

But Delaney notes the percentage of hunger banquets may be larger because planning information is readily available for free at OxfamAmerica.org (http://harvest.oxfamamerica.org ).

Some hunger banquet organizers aren't affiliated with Oxfam. Faith groups, schools and businesses often conduct hunger banquets without notifying Oxfam — or even realizing the world aid organization developed the charitable concept.

"I've been to countless hunger banquets," says Delaney. "They never fail to move people. They never fail to move me."

2. You may not be satisfied.

Unlike wedding receptions, potluck dinners or other communal feasting opportunities, the goal of a hunger banquet is not to provide participants with a free meal. Instead, hunger banquets aim to offer an experiential glimpse at the statistics of world hunger and poverty.

"Let's say you invite 100 people," says Delaney. "As the people enter the room, they receive one of three different tickets. Fifteen of those people receive a full-course meal, sit at a table with nice linens, crystal, flowers, the works. Twenty-five of those people typically sit in a chair. They don't have a table. They receive a simple meal of rice and beans. And 60 of those people will sit on the floor and share a communal bowl of rice."

Depending on where you sit and what you eat, a speaker will inform you what role you play in world hunger, whether you're a starving mother from Mozambique or a Guatemalan coffee farmer who's just getting by. At the end of the meal, participants are often asked to share their personal experiences.

3. You may not sit in a chair.

Eating a bowl of rice on the floor instead of a burger on your couch doesn't replicate the experience of living in poverty in Cambodia. Oxfam knows this. The role-playing in the hunger banquet relies heavily on the impact of something so meager yet so powerful.

"We're not approximating the kind of suffering that we're talking about at the banquet," says Delaney. "But it does give people that moment where they come face to face with the fact that perhaps their husband or brother or roommate is sitting at the table and they're sitting on the floor."

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Derrik J. Lang is an asap reporter based in New York.

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