NATCHEZ — A school-wide collaboration at Trinity Episcopal Day School Thursday gave students knowledge about the world around them.

Trinity hosted its first World Hunger Project Thursday evening. Canned food items were donated and will be given to the Natchez Stewpot — kicking of Trinity’s month long food drive.

The World Hunger Project is a partnership program between Trinity’s global study initiative, coordinated by teacher Linda Rodriguez, and the service learning initiative, coordinated by the Rev. C.J. Meaders.

Both Rodriguez and Meaders organized Thursday’s event.

During the event, students celebrated the United Nation World Food Day, which focuses attention on issues concerning food and hunger.

Students across Trinity partnered together for the event.

“Not only have they learned about other parts of the world and hunger issues, but they learned about each other,” Rodriguez said.

Countries were chosen among the teams prior to the event.

Students gave presentations of their countries during the program, granting them the chance to know the population of their country, the amount of income a family makes, how families fight hunger and what the country most proud of.

Trinity students that were partnered together in teams picked countries to focus their project on.

Sixth grader Vivian Tran, 11, has Vietnamese ancestry, thus, Tran’s group, which consisted of third graders teaming up with sixth graders, chose Vietnam for their country.

“We learned how much Vietnam was in poverty and the heritage and culture,” Tran said.

Rodriguez wants students to understand that hunger and poverty is a real problem.

“We hope to be able to give the Stewpot a real nice donation to help fight hunger within the community,” Rodriguez said. “Doing projects like this and focusing their attention on needs that are both local and global will push our kids to become the movers and changers of our future.”

Students within Tran’s group were able to learn more about Vietnam.

“I learned about how much poverty is actually in Vietnam,” said sixth grader Grace Richardson. “I really enjoyed doing the research.”

Meaders was the master of ceremonies during the event, helping students give their presentations.

“We wanted to do something to raise awareness about hunger throughout the globe,” Meaders said. “Most religions tell you to take care of those in need.”

Meaders said he was proud of the World Hunger Project.

“The thing that really shined for me in this was the collaboration between classes,” Meaders said. The older students were willing to work with the younger kids and acted as mentors.”

Trinity head of school Les Hegwood said the World Hunger Project was eventful.

“It’s good to see multiple grades come together and work together by raising awareness for global hunger,” Hegwood said. “To be able to bring it full circle and kick off our canned food drive has been fun to see.”

Hegwood said the World Hunger Project is not just about learning, but also about becoming more compassionate for others in the world.