Thursday Thirteen 257: Hunger Awareness

September is Hunger Action Month (HAM) here in the United States. On September 6th, one of our local TV stations is partnering with the Second Harvest Foodbank for the "Go Orange for Hunger" campaign. People are encouraged to wear orange today (the color for hunger awareness) and help get the word out about a serious problme in our country. Here are a few statistics about hunger in America.


1. Hunger and poverty, though linked, are not synonymous. Unemployment is a better indicator of food insecurity (not knowing where your next meal is coming from, or if there will be enough) than poverty. In 2010, 46.2 million people (15.1 percent) were in poverty, while 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households -- 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children.

2. In 2010, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (20.2 percent), especially households with children headed by single women (35.1 percent) or single men (25.4 percent), Black non-Hispanic households (25.1 percent) and Hispanic households (26.2 percent).

3. In 2009, 8.0 percent of seniors living alone (925,000 households) were food insecure.

4. Food insecurity exists in every county in America, ranging from a low of 5 percent in Steele County, ND to a high of 38 percent in Wilcox County, AL.

5. Nine states exhibited statistically significant higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average 2008-2010:

United States: 14.6%
Mississippi: 19.4%
Texas: 18.8%
Arkansas: 18.6%
Alabama: 17.3%
Georgia: 16.9%
Ohio: 16.4%
Florida: 16.1%
California: 15.9%
North Carolina: 15.7%

6. In 2010, 4.8 percent of all U.S. households (5.6 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times.

7. In 2010, 59.2 percent of food-insecure households participated in at least one of the three major Federal food assistance programs –Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamp Program), The National School Lunch Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

8. Feeding America provides emergency food assistance to an estimated 37 million low-income people annually, a 46 percent increase from 25 million since Hunger in America 2010.

9. Among members of Feeding America, 74 percent of pantries, 65 percent of kitchens, and 54 percent of shelters reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites.

10. According to the USDA, over 16 million children lived in food insecure (low food security and very low food security) households in 2010.

11. In 2010, the top five states with the highest rate of food insecure children under 18 are the District of Columbia, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida. The top five states with the lowest rate of food insecure children under 18 are North Dakota, New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, and Massachusetts.

12. Proper nutrition is vital to the growth and development of children. During the 2010 federal fiscal year, 20.6 million low-income children received free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program. Unfortunately, just 2.3 million of these same income-eligible children participated in the Summer Food Service Program that same year.

13. Research indicates that hungry children have do more poorly in school and have lower academic achievement because they are not well prepared for school and cannot concentrate.


What can you do to help?

Contribute to your local food pantry or make an online donation to a hunger-relief program such as Second Harvest or Feeding America. Many supermarkets, schools, polls and community centers have food donation barrels to collect non-perishable food items--pick up an extra can of vegetables or package of pasta next time you go grocery shopping and drop it in the barrel on your way out. Some stores also have donation gift cards or bags valued at $5 already done up for people to purchase and donate.

If you have a garden, many pantries and food kitchens accept surplus vegetables to donate to program participants. Plant an extra acre next spring specifically for a local food pantry, or help plant a community garden in your area. If you are a hunter, check with local pantries and kitchens to see if they will accept donations of venison (many do!).


Source: FeedingAmerica.org
More Thursday Thirteen posts

They're protesting the Bee?!

A fellow Romance Diva just posted the link to the article below. Go ahead and read it, then come back. I'll wait.


In DC, even the Spelling Bee draws protesters


Done? Okay, here is my opinion.

What irritates me most about this protest is that it's educators who are doing it. Instead of dumbing down the language (or standards in general), they should be encouraging people to follow the example set by these kids to excel. I have grandparents and great-grandparents who came to this country from Norway, Germany and France. They did not expect the people in this country to speak their language. They did not expect people to give them a break because they did not know the language. They immediately started to learn English, the predominate language spoken in this country, so that they could understand what was going on around them and fit in.

Also, the protester seems to completely miss the fact that the way words are spelled has much to do with country (language) of origin. The English language, more than any other, has always absorbed words from other languages. Unlike countries such as France, there is no language police here, deciding whether to accept or refuse a word from another culture, or whether to accept a word but alter its spelling so as to make it appear more "English".

It's no wonder the stereotype of the "dumb American" exists. It's appalling, really, how much the education system in this country has changed over the past several decades, and not for the better. Look at what our parents and grandparents were learning in school—and in what grades—compared to kids today. A prime example? One of my favorite Christmas movies is A Christmas Story. During the film, the 4th grade class is shown reading the book Silas Marner. That was in the 1940s. By 1980 you were lucky if kids could handle that book in the 9th grade, and not many schools teach it at all now. (It is, by the way, a good book.)

And have you ever read old newspapers from the 1950s or—even better—earlier? I love browsing old articles in the online archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society and the like. I love the vocabulary and the way they used language. It is not uncommon to see great four or five-syllable words. Why? Because they did not assume that 90% of their readers would not know what a word meant if it had more than two syllables. They assumed that if a person didn't know the word, they would look it up. Isn't that what most of us were taught from an early age, if you don't know something, look it up?

If anything we need TOUGHER educational standards in this country, not more lenient ones. Lengthening the school year would be a good start. The US already has one of the shortest school years in the world. The summer break is so long that kids forget half of what they learned by start of the next semester. Let's get back to the days when a fourth grader could actually read and understand a book like Silas Marner.

As for me, I believe I will protest the protesters by watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee on TV tonight and cheering these young spellers on. The Bee airs on ABC at 8PM/7C.