Part Four: A Global Perspective

hen Claudia Probart came to Rome a year ago, it was to work at the Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.N.'s lead agency for nutrition, rural development, and food security. In 1996 FAO hosted the World Food Summit, at which representatives from 186 countries pledged to cut world hunger in half by the year 2015.

"I'm interested in developing the use of technology in nutrition education," Probart said. At all levels, she should add: This spring Probart actually chaired a Penn State doctoral dissertation in University Park via two-way audio/video link from Rome. Back home she is director of Project PA, a state-funded program for improving school food-service that is now being disseminated nationwide by satellite teleconferencing.

Probart sees communications technology as a crucial tool for fighting hunger. During travels over the last ten years in Costa Rica, Barbados, and war-torn Croatia, she said, she has been impressed by the desperate need for effective, low-cost nutrition education for public-health professionals in developing and transitional areas. "The Web and teleconferencing are excellent tools for doing this," she argued. "Some people say, 'There are no computers in the villages,' but in the capitals there are. And these countries can't afford to send people abroad for face-to-face education in traditional university settings. They need distance education."

As a visiting nutrition expert at FAO, Probart developed lesson plans for Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger, an educational program on hunger for schoolchildren around the world, including primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. After they are translated into all official FAO languages, these materials will be officially launched on World Food Day in October. (They are already available for downloading from the Web.)

When that project was completed Probart was sent to Zambia, where she served as a consultant and gave computer-education training sessions to teachers and curriculum developers working to introduce nutrition-intervention programs in the Luapula Valley. Introducing these educators to the rich resources available on the Web, she said, "was like opening a new world for them."

Returning to Rome, Probart began work to finalize her evolving plan to use the city as a base for teaching international nutrition to Penn State students. She met with Romolo Martemucci and saw the facilities at Sede di Roma, and the two explored the possibilities for the collaboration that has taken shape as the International Program in Nutrition. Rome (and Italy) does seem to be a ferment of food-related issues in particular this summer. Airport inspection lines reflect concern for foot-and-mouth disease. Opposition to genetically modified foods, here as elsewhere in Europe, is louder than it is in the United States. The G8 economic summit just concluded in Genoa inspired anti-globalization signs and graffiti even in small mountain villages.

Probart's students have enjoyed a special perspective on all these developments, hearing talks on food security, bioethics, trade and other topics from experts at the FAO and the World Food Program, also headquartered here. "People tend to think of international nutrition as only dealing with hunger and malnutrition in developing countries," Probart said. "But food standards, safety, and technology are global issues.

"My students are as likely to work in a think tank on bioengineering as they are to join the Peace Corps," she said. "I want them to understand the whole spectrum of issues related to the food we eat."