When we have it we provide each family with several cans of all of the above items. If every food pantry were heavily stocked with the above items many people would be fed. Due to space limitations and the need for eggs and oil cake mixes, pancake mixes etc are not as helpful as basic food. Outdated cans must be discarded and the Board of Health will not allow us to distribute home canned food. Most of our pantries receive bread, cakes, donuts, pies, and other ready made sweet items from Kroger. If you would like to give money, we are able to purchase many of the above items from Food Finders in Lafayette for a reduced cost, often as low as 19 cents per pound.
Without Pantries but part of network: Information and Referal 211 and United Way
Hunger predisposes our children to behavioral difficulties, including:
Hunger impedes our children’s ability to learn and perform academically. Hungry children are likely to:
35 million Americans – including 12.6 million children – are food-insecure.
Food insecurity exits in 10% or more of American households:
Households with children have a food insecurity rate almost double that of households without children, increasing their risk of hunger tremendously.
Above-average rates of food insecurity (and risk of hunger) occur among:
13.4 million children in America live in poverty today, representing roughly 1 in 6 children.
More than 13% of Americans — 38 million — live below the poverty threshold of $21,200 for a family of four, or $407 per week, on average.
Poverty in America is commonly caused by:
Children in American households below the poverty threshold or headed by a single woman are at the greatest risk of hunger; not only do these households have the highest rate of food insecurity overall, they also have the highest rate of the most severe form (“very low”) of food insecurity.
Child nutrition programs make a positive difference.
The U.S. government is spending $51 billion on food assistance, including Food Stamp, School Lunch and Breakfast, WIC, and Child and Adult Care Food programs.
1 in 5 Americans use at least one of USDA’s food and nutrition assistance programs during the year.
The average monthly food stamp benefit is $93 per person-barely $1 per meal.
26.7 million Americans use food stamps in an average month. Half of these recipients are children.
The WIC program provides 8 million American women and children an average monthly benefit of $38 per person.
Children and infants account for 3/4 of WIC participants.
Every $1 spent on WIC results in $1.77 to $3.13 in Medicaid savings for newborns and their mothers. Additional benefits include:
Over 29 million American children eat a federally-funded school lunch each school day; 60% of these lunches – 17.4 million — are free or reduced-price.
552,000 more low-income students participate in the school lunch program this year than last.
Children in 11.5 million food-insecure households participate in the free or reduced-price school lunch program.
Benefits of school breakfast go beyond making sure students don’t start the day hungry. They include:
44% of school children receiving a free or reduced-price lunch are now also getting a free or reduced-price school breakfast, up from just 29% in 1989.
School breakfast is provided to more than 9 million children on a typical school day.
9.6 million eligible children do not receive free or reduced-price school breakfast
16 million kids qualify for summer meals but don’t receive them.
Food banks and food-rescue organizations provide emergency hunger-relief to 9% of all Americans-about 25 million persons.
More than one-third of individuals served by food banks are children under 18. Households with children (particularly those headed by a single female or with children under the age of 6) are nearly twice as likely to use food pantries as those without children.
Food pantries provide food to more than 4 million American children.
More than 1 of every 5 households that uses a food pantry does so “almost every month.”
June 13, 2008
Indy Star
Childhood poverty in Indiana increased at five times the national average between 2000 and 2006, … elevating the rate to the overall national level—18 percent—for the first time ever.
HOOSIER, Indiana — Sometimes, catastrophe strikes with sudden, spectacular force, seizing everyone’s attention and igniting action at every level of society.
Sometimes, it creeps into the community’s fabric inch by inch and day by day, acutely felt by those it directly affects but overlooked by the rest of us until the hour grows late — perhaps too late.
On Wednesday, as eight Indiana counties were declared federal disaster areas and Hoosiers continued to fight back against the weather siege of the past two weeks, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s authoritative annual Kids Count report hit the news.
The document makes for a grim damage assessment and an ominous social and economic forecast.
Childhood poverty in Indiana increased at five times the national average between 2000 and 2006, according to the report, elevating the rate to the overall national level — 18 percent — for the first time ever.
When one in five children in a state can be classified as poor, a cycle of cause and effect is in motion that seems harder to stop than torrential rain.
Low education, inadequate health care and teenage pregnancy, prime obstacles to getting ahead in life, worsen. Government assistance, which requires tax dollars, suffers from a weakened economic base that is impacted, in turn, by an underqualified work force. Businesses, legitimately hurting and at the same time taking advantage of a desperate immigrant labor pool, push down wages. Churches and charities find themselves spread thinner and thinner.
It is everyone’s problem and everyone’s obligation, in short, much in the way that a natural disaster puts the onus on officialdom, private philanthropy, neighbors and each individual to weigh the damage, critique the preparedness and the response, forget finger-pointing and get to work.
Less obviously than in the case of the flooding mobilization, lots of hard work has been done to alleviate the perfect storm of poverty meeting poverty. The state is providing health insurance to more low-income people and dispensing more food stamps, though it has cut the family assistance rolls and is being sued by needy people over Medicaid changes. In Indianapolis in particular, the corporate and philanthropic sectors have ratcheted up their partnerships with the public schools. The schools themselves — private, traditional public and charter — have taken bold strides to cut into the dropout rate.
Many more sandbags need to be hauled. More boats need to be deployed. But with the falling flood waters, as with the rising tide of poverty, the ultimate rescuers are individuals and families themselves. No child must be left to sink, but all must be taught to swim.
Many people are unaware of the people in our own communities who suffer from hunger or food insecurity. This is especially a problem for the young and elderly people in our communities.
Description: A video clip that takes viewers through a poverty simulation. It includes information about budgeting for poverty, including housing, transportation, food, and child care.
Food Research and Action CenterDescription: This Web site provides links to many articles and much information pertaining to childhood hunger, food stamps, food assistance, USDA food programs, and much more.Hunger: Its impact on Children’s Health and Mental Health
Author: Linda, Weinreb; Cheryl Wehler; Jennifer Perloff; Richard Scott
Publisher: American Academy of Pediatrics, PEDIATRICS, Vol. 110 No. 4 (October 2002)
Description: This observational study involving 408 children examines child hunger and its impact on physical and mental health. Using standardized tools comprehensive demographic, psychosocial and health data were collected from homeless and low-income housed mothers and their children in Worcester, MA
Characterstics of Food Stamp Households: Fiscal Year 2001 (pdf)
Author: Tuttle, Chrisitina
Publisher: USDA (July 2002)
Description: This report profiles characteristics of food stamp recipients based on 2001 data. It includes composition of households, benefits and income. It contains national and state specific data.
How to Organize a Community Food Drive
Author: Franck, Louise
Publisher: University of Maine Cooperative Extension (1996)
Description: A fact sheet that illustrates the ways in which one can organize a food drive in the community.
Food for your Community: Gleaning and Sharing
Author: Hundhammer, Marjorie
Publisher: University of Richmond (2000)
Description: A fact sheet describing steps in setting up a crop gleaning hunger relief project.
Food Assistance Programs
Publisher: Food and Nutrition Service
Description: The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), formerly known as the Food and Consumer Service, administers the nutrition assistance programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The mission of FNS is to provide children and needy families better access to food and a more healthful diet through its food assistance programs and comprehensive nutrition education efforts.
Food Assistance
Publisher: North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension Services (1997)
Description: Chapter 13 in a manual that addresses community strategies to help families become self-sufficient. This chapter discusses issues associated with obtaining healthy food for low income families.
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