My Eyes Have Been Opened

(This post has been 2 weeks in the making.  I have written from the heart on this one and instead of going back to proof read what I have written, I am just going to post it.  If I were to go back and proof it, it would take me another hour or so and I want to get this posted without putting it off.)

I’m surprised I have anyone following me after a very, very long time of not posting.  I have been sent down a rabbit hole ever since I started researching living on SNAP food benefits.  I began to try to figure out what an average family would get, how they would make that stretch for 4 people and that led me to doing a lot of research. 

You see, it’s not as simple as I thought.  I thought that I would get the SNAP amount, the amount of people in the family, perhaps do a scenario where they were unemployed and had small children, but that wasn’t enough for me. 

Little did I know that this small project would open my eyes to a problem in my community, state and country.   I have found out through me son, who is a teacher, through other teachers, through grocery store managers, clerks at stores and law enforcement that there is an incredible amount of people living in poverty in my community.  It is getting worse every year. 

My son is in his 4^th year of teaching high school, the last two years at his alma mater.  He graduated in 2003 and has told me that in 11 years since his high school graduation the student population has changed a lot in that there are more and more kids that live in poverty as compared to when he was a high school student.  It has increased by a great margin.

I always knew that there were people that were poor in our community, but I never realized how many people in our community live with hunger every day.  I have heard stories from school bus drivers where kids have gotten onto their bus asking the bus driver if they had any food OR where the kids on the bus were worried that the bus might be late and they may miss breakfast at school.  In one school district near us I heard about the football team that wasn’t performing well, because the players were hungry because of not having enough food in the home.  A local woman got involved and then got her church involved in getting proper food to these athletes and starting a weekend backpack food program.

In a small community of 11,000 you would think that you would be more aware of the level of poverty and hunger, but I wasn’t.  In late November and December and early January the local newspaper published articles regarding local charities.  I clipped the articles and put them in an envelope.  I read more and more online articles about the 50^th anniversary of LBJ’s war on poverty and I came to one conclusion:  in the 1960’s and early 1970’s we did a lot of work to end poverty, but the problem is back and it is worse than ever. 

No matter what you think about people living in poverty, the one thing that should make you shudder is that children are hungry all the time and not getting the proper nutrition that they need to do well in school and life in general.    Children don’t have a choice in their circumstances.

It’s not that I have had my head in a hole, I just didn’t realize the magnitude of the problem and how many people in our community go to bed hungry.  I am presently doing more research as to the numbers of singles and couples making minimum wage that are termed the “working poor.”

I began reading books on hunger and poverty in America, watching documentaries on Netflix and from the local public library.  I shared what I learned with women at my church.  This led to 5 of us forming a group to research the hunger needs of women and children in our community.  We made a list of local charities and have been conducting interviews. 

I am learning about the Working Poor and how our local Food Pantry is not open during hours when they can access it.  I am learning about food deserts and all sorts of things.  I have studied the history of food stamps and have watched with sadness recently as more and more benefits have been cut. 

Education is power.  I am enrolled in an online class on children’s nutrition on Coursera.  If you are interested in free online classes on all types of subjects google Coursera or EdX. 

So I am taking this knowledge and using it.  For the past 4 ½ years since being home I have wanted to do something with my life that really mattered (not that being home and taking care of family isn’t important) but I wanted to give back to some kind of organization or movement.  I wasn’t able to find anything that made me want to give my time and resources to, so I have created one.

The bottom line to our research is that kids in our school district are coming to school hungry and staying hungry over the weekend.  We are looking at a backpack program to send home food on the weekends.  High schoolers are hungry when they go to school and although most of them qualify for free breakfast they won’t stand in line to get breakfast because there is a stigma OR it isn’t enough to get them through the morning.  We are thinking about breakfast on the go where we put granola bars, a piece of fruit and some milk or juice boxes in a sack, have them come by our church parking lot and we hand them these sacks to eat prior to school OR providing a hot breakfast once a week for all high schoolers in our community.

Then there is the problem of the lack of nutrition in the school lunch program itself.  This led me to studying how the school lunch program began back in the 1940’s and how it changed from providing good nutritious meals to heat and eat junky food that kids have become used to eating over the years . 

This sabbatical I have been on has been the best thing I could have done.  It was a God thing how it happened in that God put some women in my church that I didn’t know very well in my Sunday School class, we got a discussion going and we found out that we had the same interests in fighting hunger and ending poverty. 

Also, I am back.  I missed posting but I am glad that I took time off to educate myself.  I will post after our group meets at the end of this month to report on their interviews with local charities.  I myself will be interviewing the local school superintendent and food service director. 

And as to the living on SNAP benefits, my research has led me to doing interviews with people that are doing just that and struggling.  As I get more information from these people, I will report on how they are doing it or not doing it. 

"A Place at the Table" - A Documentary that is Changing My Life

One month ago I posted about how I was wondering what it would be like to have to live on food stamps as your sole source of food money. I asked you, my readers to help me by coming up with some scenarios. I will still be posting my ideas but – a lot has happened since then. I have been too busy – too busy in fact to put up my Christmas tree yet.

One day a neighbor from a block away came to my house and asked if I had a frozen chicken that he could have. I had a whole chicken and I gave it to him. Have you ever had a neighbor come to your home asking for food? How hard was that to do? Right after I posted that article, I came across a documentary on Netflix called “A Place at the Table.” I streamed it and watched it a couple of times.

This documentary came out in 2012. On Netflix it is described as follows “Using personal stories, this powerful documentary illuminates the plight of the 49 million Americans struggling with food insecurity. A single mother, a small-town policeman and a farmer are among those for whom putting food on the table is a daily battle.” This documentary is every enlightening and I am asking as many of my followers as possible to watch this.

If you don’t have Netflix, ask your public library to get this documentary. Why? You will be surprised at what you learn. This documentary dispels the myths about hunger and poverty that you may have. Also it describes terms such as “Food Deserts” where fresh fruits and vegetables are not available or the fact that someone living in an inner city setting has to take a bus to a grocery store that takes 2 hours round trip. It also tells the story of one minister trying to feed the people in his small community. One person is a police officer who now goes to the food pantry for food for his family. He hasn’t had a raise in 4 years and with the cost of food going up, his paycheck just doesn’t make it to the end of the month.

This documentary has some Hollywood backing in Jeff Bridges. He, along with his brother, Beau, have been talking about hunger in America for years. This documentary goes you historical background and also shows you what people are up against. For example, the single mom who finally gets a job, but her income is just a little bit too much and and she no longer qualifies for SNAP or child care assistance. She’s worse off working; then when she was on unemployment and assistance. Her food situation is dire. Stress from not being able to provide can make a person so sick. (No matter what you think about people on food assistance, always remember that the babies and children have no say in their parent’s choices for how they spend their SNAP funds.)

Something is wrong when we live in the greatest nation in the world and yet we have children living with little food. The other problem is health related. Living on high processed, high carbohydrate food means obesity and type 2 diabetes and other health problems. Fresh fruits and vegetables are too expensive for many people. After I saw this documentary, I purchased a DVD that came out 15 years ago starring Beau Bridges as a widower with two children and his struggle with unemployment and feeding his two children. It is called “Hidden in America.” It portrays someone who wants to work and is actively looking for work and doesn’t want to be on assistance. He tries so hard, but in the end he has to go to apply for food assistance and goes to a food bank.  This is a gut wrenching story that sheds the light on hunger, especially with his kids.

Here is the problem: we don’t give our children adequate nutrition and they perform poorly in school. In our school district alone there are over 50% of the children on free lunches and breakfasts. However, the USDA guidelines leave nutrition to the side when it comes to the school meals. High fat, high carbohydrate food is on the menu. Heat and eat foods is what kids get more and more.

After viewing the documentary and film, I went ahead and purchased the participant’s book given the same name as the documentary, “A Place at the Table.” I have been reading it a chapter at a time each night. This book is a great companion to the documentary and it goes into detail where the documentary can’t. Why? It would take another 2 hours to get it all down on film. For example, one chapter deals with the history of food stamps and how it came into being in 1939. The initial program helped farms and the poor by offering fresh fruits and vegetables and other extra farm commodities at a reduced rate that could be purchased with food stamps. Over the years the program morphed into allowing more foods to be purchased with food stamps, such as soda drinks.  Don’t believe everything you hear on the news, do the research yourself. Call your library and ask to get that book perhaps through an inter library loan.

After a couple of weeks of watching documentaries and reading and researching, I received an e-mail from a friend at church. A nearby college was hosting a hunger and homelessness awareness week. The friend asked me if I would like to attend a few of the events with her. I was very excited to go and learn more. The first night they showed the documentary “A Place at the Table.” The next night we were invited to a panel discussion. Four panelists were present: one was the director of a local food pantry; one was a director of a large homeless shelter, one was from an organization that helps to fill the gaps in between charities and one person who promotes community gardens and individual gardens for individuals to grow their own produce.

The 3rd night was an OXFAM banquet. I was given the role of being a middle income individual and was served rice and beans. There were guest speakers from the World Food Bank and a professor who is teaching a class on Food and Justice.

OKAY – why am I telling you this? We all want to leave this life having made a difference and I am finding my niche.

Between me and my friend, we have solicited a few other like minded women at our church to work on poverty and hunger in our community. We are in the process of interviewing 15 local charities to find out their purpose, their needs and their vision for our community to aid in this issue. In January when we meet and report our findings to each other, it is our goal to find a “gap” in meeting the needs of the hungry and poor in our community. We don’t want to overlap or try to fill a need that is already being met.

 I’m not sure where we will find the gap, but I am guessing that we may start a weekend food backpack program in our elementary school, summer time meals for children when school is out, or even a breakfast program at our church for students in High School. Most of these students could get a free breakfast, but how many poor High School students want that stigma?

We will concentrate our efforts on one program. I am passionate to do something.

I want to also find a way to reduce our expenses as much as possible so that we can get money in the bank for our retirement. I have no idea what the cost of living will be in 11 years when we retire, but I am now feeling as if we need to set aside more money for food and other incidentals. If anything, I could save money so that when there is a hunger need, I can help meet it.

Food Insecurity is just a fancy word for Hunger

I am beginning to research hunger especially among children in my community.  I'm not sure why this came to mind one day, but it did.  I have never gone hungry although when I was a child food was scarce when my dad's union went on strike.  We still ate, but at times it was just oatmeal.  I don't remember feeling hungry as the oatmeal filled me up, I just wished I had more choices.

Recently the government cut back on food assistance benefits (SNAP program) effective November 1st.  I know that there are people who abuse the system.  There will always be abusers, however I know that there are more people in need that don't abuse the system versus those that do.  Of particular interest to me are the children.  No matter what choices the parents make, children have no decisions in the matter.  In our country it is beyond my comprehension why a child should go without food.  

Many families are under employed or have been unemployed for a long time.  Having access to food is a priority and in my opinion is the right of every American.  This country produces enough food for all of us, it's just that some of us can afford food and some of us can't.

I have been watching videos on You Tube regarding people on SNAP and what it is like to be a mother and not be able to feed her children.  I have watched many videos produced by "Feeding America."  All of this got me to wonder what it would be like to be a single mom receiving SNAP benefits for her and her school aged son during the summer months.  This means no free school breakfast, lunch or after school program because it is summer.  So, what would this look like? It looks like $1.40 per person per meal.  

Instead of going on the food stamp challenge myself, I want to come up with meals on the above limited amount of money for 1 week for this type of scenario:  single mom with a school age son.  I am going to use the advertisement from the nearest grocery store and make up a list of food choices as if I am living in poverty.   I am assuming that I won't have a car and will have to walk to the nearest store for groceries.  

Here is what I would like from my readers:  I need your help in setting up this scenario.  

1.  What items would you think this type of person would have on hand that I wouldn't have to buy on my first shopping trip?  For example, ketchup, mustard, sugar, flour, soy sauce, salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder.  What do you think someone would have in their cupboard?  You may think that someone in a dire situation wouldn't have any of the above, and if so, let me hear from you.

2.  I have never been to a food pantry.  In our community I know that I would need to be referred.  Let's say that I get a referral, give me a list of a few items you think I would be able to get from my local food pantry for the week.  Set the situation for me.  

3.  Give me any other ideas to set this situation up.  Be brutal as I want to really have this as a challenge just as if I was this mom, underemployed, and struggling to feed my son.  I want to experience the sadness, fear and pain of figuring this all out.

So, give me your ideas so I can set up the challenge for myself.