One out of five American children are hungry. Feeding America, the country\u2019s largest hunger relief organization with more than 200 food depositories located through America, reported that children suffer the most from hunger. \u201cIt\u2019s never a child\u2019s fault that they don\u2019t have enough to eat,\u201d Nikki Grizzle, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the nation-wide children\u2019s charity, Blessings in a Backpack, said, \u201cso why should they suffer?\u201d Children who are malnourished for an extended amount of time can suffer mental, physical and cognitive disorders, according to Ross Fraser, the Director of Media Relations at Feeding America. James Conwell, the Communications Manager of The Greater Chicago Food Depository, reported that within Cook County, one out of four children are hungry, whereas the national average is one out of five. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of an invisible issue,\u201d Fraser said.<\/p>\n
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Annually, nearly 678,000 people in Cook County rely on hunger relief organizations for food. According to the Greater Chicago Food Depository\u2019s statistical analysis, approximately 37 percent of the average 142,000 people served per week are children. Nine percent of those children are under the age of five.<\/p>\n
Food insecurity is a rising factor among Chicago children. While Fraser defined the term as \u201ca fancy way of saying you can\u2019t afford three meals a day,\u201d food insecurity is precisely that: the lack of available resources to sustain a healthy diet. Inversely, \u201cFood security\u201d means having physical and fiscal access to appropriate amounts of alimentary foods. \u201cThe reality,\u201d Fraser said, \u201cis one out of seven Americans live under poverty\u2026 and that\u2019s always astonishing.\u201d The majority of the clients are extremely low-income families with children, he stated. \u201cTo end hunger, we first have to understand it,\u201d Fraser said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people like to tell us that it\u2019s the parent\u2019s responsibility to feed the children,\u201d Grizzle began. \u201cThough that may be, I don\u2019t believe that any child should go hungry because of the actions of their parents,\u201d she continued. Blessings in a Backpack has united with three Chicago schools thus far. Specific locations and names of the schools are not released for security purposes, the charity\u2019s website explained. Similarly, Conwell stated the Greater Chicago Food Depository believes their clients deserve to be treated with dignity. \u201cThe people we serve should be treated with the same amount of respect as everyone else,\u201d he said. The Greater Food Depository of Chicago and Feeding America also donate to Chicago Public Schools.<\/p>\n
Amy Satoh, the Manager of Social Policy and Research at Feeding America, believes that these families are survivors. \u201cThey know how to survive, they know how to piece it all together,\u201d she said. Satoh conducted the organization\u2019s hunger study, \u201cHunger in America,\u201d which included statistics on food-insecurity levels in different locations in America. \u201cAccording to the USDA, 17 million children are food insecure,\u201d was one of the many statistics on childhood hunger publicized within the study.<\/p>\n
Feeding America reported feeding roughly 6 million per year, with the Greater Chicago Food Depository feeding just less than one-sixth of that number. According to Conwell, Feeding America \u2013 an agency \u2013 and the Depository \u2013 an agency with programs \u2013 are separate entities, but work together. \u201cThe Greater Chicago Food Depository works with about 450 different agencies for about 650 programs,\u201d Conwell reported. \u201cSo the reason for the difference is some agencies have more than one program, and some of our programs aren\u2019t in agencies… Like our lunch buses and some of our children\u2019s programs.\u201d This summer, the organization will have roughly 116 children\u2019s program, focusing on child-hunger awareness to increase local support, Conwell said.<\/p>\n
Blessings in a Backpack, initiated in Kentucky,\u00a0is an organization \u201cwith a staff of eight,\u201d Grizzle said. The organization strives to \u201c Provide Weekend Nourishment to School Children on the Federal Free and Reduced Meal Program,\u201d their website said. The program is held within public schools and can be established by basically anyone who shows an interest. Grizzle said a single school in Louisville, KY founded the first program circa 2005. \u201cSince then,\u201d she said,\u201d We\u2019ve expanded to over 42 states and 540 programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over 58,000 students have been \u201cblessed.\u201d Grizzled reported that close to 60,000 children are fed every weekend. \u201cWe have thousands of volunteers,\u201d she said. Studies have shown, according to the charities website, participating students have shown marked improvement in school attendance; test scores, behavior, and \u2013 over all \u2013 health. \u201cBlessings not only helps the students that bring the backpacks home, but it can help the whole family,\u201d Grizzle said. Blessings in a Backpack was recently featured in People Magazine, telling the story of James and Melanie Ford, a Florida family who struggled to provide substantial meals before the charity.<\/p>\n
Blessings in a Backpack made it clear that, \u201cMost of these kids live in a world where some food is better than no food,\u201d and annually have a nutritionist review their standard menu to promote \u201ckid-friendly, nutritious, non-perishable and easy-to-prepare\u201d meals. A typical backpack \u2013 in which was provided free of charge by the national Blessings in a Backpack, Inc. organization\u00a0 \u2013 consists of food such as granola bars, mac and cheese, juice and such.<\/p>\n
Conwell reported that the Greater Chicago Food Depository prides themselves on their \u201cstrong nutritional safety net\u201d and only distributes high quality food. Feeding America also provides healthy food, Fraser said, producing millions of pounds of fresh produce each year. \u201cAll we care about is getting food to hungry people,\u201d he said. It\u2019s essential for children to get adequate nutrition during their early years to lead healthy and happy, productive lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One out of five American children are hungry. Feeding America, the country\u2019s largest hunger relief organization with more than 200 food depositories located through America, reported that children suffer the most from hunger. \u201cIt\u2019s never a child\u2019s fault that they don\u2019t have enough to eat,\u201d Nikki Grizzle, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the … Continue reading invisible food<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[27,16,30,22,28,20],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-journalist","tag-27","tag-circa-2013","tag-freshman-year","tag-interview","tag-journalism","tag-student"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HHH1-P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}