Jordan-Hare Stadium holds 87,451 fans at maximum capacity.
Multiply that number by 560 and that's how many Americans were food insecure in 2012--a total of 49 million, according to Feeding America.
The Why Care Campaign has returned to Auburn this semester and seeks to continue its mission to raise awareness about worldwide and local hunger issues.
Most easily recognized by the table on the concourse with the Why I Care white boards, the Why Care Campaign aims to get students to think about hunger and its implications.
"Through the simple act of taking a picture holding a sign, we're trying to get people to identify within themselves why they care about this issue," said Kate Thornton, director of Hunger and Sustainability Initiatives in the College of Human Sciences and the Hunger Solutions Institute.
According to Thornton, by contemplating the issue and pinpointing why they care, the campaign is intended to encourage students to take on a more personal investment in caring and fighting world hunger.
The campaign began as a project for the Hunger Studies Capstone class, taught by Thornton, in spring 2012.
Devin Yeomans, Anna Kate Mullinix, Jennifer Daniel, and Aubrey Sullivan were the sole members of the class and, therefore, the founders of the campaign.
"Dr. Thornton basically said your job for this semester is to come up with a project to fight world hunger and change the world, go," Yeomans said.
The four women found the idea of the white board photos and built their entire campaign around it.
Students take a picture stating why they care about hunger and then the picture is shared through social media.
"The goal is to get people to think about why they care about hunger and then share that with the world," Yeomans said. "It builds that momentum around the idea."
According to Yeomans, the momentum of the campaign grabbed the attention of the Food and Agriculture Program of the United Nations (FAO), who chose the campaign to be the official campaign for World Food Day.
Over the summer of 2012, the four women worked furiously to set up a website and all necessary social media material.
"When we got back in the fall, we hit the ground running," Yeomans said.
The campaign aims to raise awareness both locally and internationally. On campus, representatives for the campaign spoke to classes about the issue of hunger in addition to continuing the photo campaign.
To expand beyond US borders, the initiators reached out to NGOs and celebrities.
"We reached 73 countries and I think we had almost 3,000 pictures collected by World Food Day," Yeoman said.
Now the Why Care Campaign is picking up again under new leadership.
Honors students in Thornton's Hunger: Causes, Consequences, and Responses class are taking it over as their semester project.
Though there will be new faces spearheading the campaign, the overall model is expected to remain similar.
The focus this year is on expansion.
"We table every Wednesday on the concourse and we get people to write on the white boards why they care about hunger," said Kara Stanley, a senior in political science who is one of this year's campaign leaders. "We're working on going into local schools and getting younger kids involved. We're working on getting politicians involved."
Stanley, who is also the Universities Fighting World Hunger intern, mentioned that last year Charles Barkley, Christina Aguilera, and Kay Ivey shared photos to support the campaign.
"This year we're working on Cam Newton," Stanley said.
However, celebrity status isn't required to make a difference.
"I think the thing with the campaign was it showed us you don't have to have a lot of money or a lot of resources or any particular job or position in order to have an impact on hunger," Yeomans said. "You can do what you can with what you have where you are."
According to Thornton, the Why Care Campaign and its partners make getting started on making a difference simple. On the Universities Fighting World Hunger website, there are resources and downloadable materials available for anyone interested in starting their own presentations on the issue.
For those who are interested in learning more about hunger or want to get involved, there are multiple upcoming events.
World Food Day is Wednesday, Oct. 16. The FAO established this day as a time to draw worldwide attention to the issue of hunger and encourage nations to collaborate on solutions to solve it. The theme for 2013 is "Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition."
Soon after, the Committee of 19 is hosting Hunger Week 2013 from Oct. 21-25.
This is a week of events focused on raising awareness about hunger and local initiatives fighting it as well as raising money for the Beat Bama Food Drive.
According to Stanley, raising awareness is just the first step.
"Hunger is so prevalent, even in Auburn," Stanley said. "If it's there, we need to do something about it."
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