Hunger museum for B.P.C.

Volume 20 Issue 9 | July 13 - 19, 2007
Hunger museum for B.P.C.

By Anindita Dasgupta

Well-to-do Battery Park City will soon get a museum devoted to studying poverty and world hunger.
Construction is moving smoothly for MercyCorps’ new World Hunger Action Center, officials told Community Board 1’s Battery Park City Committee this week.

Shyama Venkateswar, executive director of the center, presented designs for the museum this week. In addition to donating the space, the Battery Park City Authority has donated $1.25 million for the space. The center is scheduled to open in June 2008, in the Riverhouse condo building at 1 River Terrace. The center is expected to share space on the ground floor with the Poet’s House and the Battery Park City library.

Construction on the core and shell are underway. The museum will be near the neighborhood’s Irish Hunger Memorial and will have real-time information about poverty around the world.

“We don’t want people to come in and look around and leave,” Venkateswar said. “We want to give people the tools they need to make differences in their community, schools and lifestyles.”

The center will hold events like media and policy round tables, and student press events. The will also offer workshops for schools.

“We want to be working with youth groups and educators from all over the world to make this alive,” she said. “We are in the midst of so much new technology…We want to make [students] aware of global poverty and hunger issues so when they do leave the country, it isn’t such a surprise.”