Food Bank of NE La

The pervasive hunger in our nation is either our national tragedy, our national shame, or both. It is almost incomprehensible that the richest nation in the history of the world would fail to adequately address this American tragedy that devastates so many of our citizens. We study, we talk, we think, we ponder and in the end we fail to act.

Hunger is the result of not having enough resources to provide oneself with adequate nutrition. Professionals who deal with hunger talk in terms of being “food insecure”. That means that an individual does not have enough food to lead a normal, productive, active life.

In July of 2003 the population of the United States was 290,809,777. There were 37,514,461 or 12.5% living below the poverty level. There were 12,244.000 children under the age of 18 living below the poverty level. It is sad to know that 38% of the people who seek food relief through the nations food bank system are children. It is a reasonable conclusion to believe that all of these people were food insecure at least part of the time.

Of the 9.2 million families who are classified at “working poor” 27% are classified as below the poverty level. The remaining 73% are struggling also to make ends meet, however, because they are not classified as being below the poverty level they do not have access to as much help.

The real solution to the hunger problems in this nation is to publicly recognize the problem, and change our national policies that presently give hunger a low priority in the allocation of our national resources. The first step is self-education We hope that you are willing to educate yourself on hunger. If you do, we honestly believe that you will come to the conclusion that the level of hunger in America is totally unacceptable.