Some kids don’t get enough to eat, no matter what people want to tell themselves. Do the math: during the rest of the year 15 million students get free or cut-rate lunches at school, and many of them get breakfast, too. But only 3 million children are getting lunches through the federal summer lunch program. And hunger in the United States, particularly since the institution of so-called welfare reform, is epidemic. The numbers are astonishing in the land of the all-you-can-eat buffet. The Agriculture Department estimated in 1999 that 12 million children were hungry or at risk of going hungry. A group of big-city mayors released a study showing that in 2000 requests for food assistance from families increased almost 20 percent, more than at any time in the last decade. And last Thanksgiving a food bank in Connecticut gave away 4,000 more turkeys than the year before — and still ran out of birds.
But while the Christmas holidays make for heart-rending copy, summer is really ground zero in the battle tokeep kids fed. The school-lunch program, begun in the 1970s as a result of bipartisan federal legislation, has been by most measures an enormous success. For lots of poor families it’s become a way to count on getting at least one decent meal into their children, and when it disappears it’s catastrophic. Those who work at America’s Second Harvest, the biggest nonprofit supply source for food banks, talk of parents who go hungry themselves so their kids can eat, who put off paying utility and phone bills, who insist their children attent remedial summer-school programs simply so they can get a meal.
–Anna Quindlen, “School’s Out for Summer,” Newsweek June 18, 2001
Most of these families are not homeless or jobless; they are minimum-wage workers who can’t afford enough food on their salaries. Quindlen wrote, “For a significant number of Americans, the cost of an additional meal for two school-age children for the eight weeks of summer vacation seems like a small fortune.” Some won’t seek government assistance because of the stigma associated with it. Others don’t know they qualify. The process of filling out a 12-page application is overly daunting. (Having helped clients through the byzantine process of applying, it is may not be perceived as worth the effort. One client of mine was receiving $540 a month of Social Security Disability, yet she still only qualified for $12 of food assistance per month.)
While one could argue that we as a democracy should provide better support for citizens, attempting to do so through official governmental channels is cumbersome and ineffective. You have the power to make a difference in a very tangible way. Go shopping and bring your purchases to a local food bank. Donate money in the summer and not just at holiday time.
The National Association of Letter Carriers held its food drive a couple of Saturdays ago. In the past decade, they have collected 586,800,000 pounds of food during their annual drive. If you missed this opportunity, you can search for your local food bank on the America’s Second Harvest site. In Austin, the Capital Area Food Bank provides assistance to central Texas. You might also consider the Austin Sustainable Food Center; its mission is to improve access to local and affordable food.
This is a HUGE problem as you and Quindlen point out……I applaud you for including it in your posting.
Those of us who are not involved with the communities in need (or who have forgotten how it went with our own kids:) can so easily overlook the problem.
“We, the people” in our own localities can reach more, faster and better, than all the bureaucrats anywhere sometimes;-)