Bringing up hunger for dinner table conversation

By: David Sarasohn

In its current Families Against Hunger Weekend, the Southwest Portland community agency Neighborhood House is launching a bold new strategy for local families and religious groups concerned about Oregon’s hunger problem:

Stay home.

And talk about it.

Because, where’s a better place to focus on hunger than a dinner table?

“What we’re asking people to do,” explains Neighborhood House executive director Rick Nitti, “is sit down to dinner with their children and talk about hunger.”

And figure out the places the conversation could go.

You could see how the subject could come up. Southwest Portland might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think about hunger — of course, neither is Oregon, and we all know how that works out — but need has been spreading through the area like blackberry vines.

Neighborhood House estimates it provides emergency food to 500 families a month, and it recently began a program specifically for seniors. By Oregon Food Bank calculations, from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2011, the number of people served in Neighborhood House’s emergency food program rose by 117 percent.

In Southwest Portland, near carefully arranged antiques shops and inviting brunch hangouts, it’s now not unknown for schools to have more than 50 percent of their students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

The immediate remedy for hunger is, of course, food, and the most direct goal of Neighborhood House’s annual Southwest Hope campaign this year, lasting until April 1, is to bring in 150,000 pounds of food or the cash equivalent. It’s a major effort, involving 60 local partners, including businesses, agencies and more than 23 Southwest religious institutions — Christian, Jewish and Muslim.

But this year, the goal is a bit wider than that — beyond bringing in canned goods to actually bringing up hunger as a subject. In past years, Southwest Hope had a larger restaurant component, with restaurants generously donating a portion of a day’s receipts. That’s a smaller part of the package now.

People don’t generally talk about hunger in restaurants.

At home, however, it might come up.

“There are people begging on the streets in Portland,” points out Neighborhood House development director Mari Yerger. “It’s pretty hard not to notice.”

What’s harder to notice — what could actually take some conversation — is the level of hunger that isn’t obvious on the street. The national food bank alliance Feeding America, after all, has calculated that Oregon has the highest rate of child food insecurity in the country, meaning that there’s a lot of hunger that isn’t standing behind a cardboard sign in downtown Portland.

The goal of this weekend is not only to point out the existence of hunger but also to remind people that there are ways — and yes, agencies — to deal with it.

“There aren’t very many places where you can bring in young children under the age of 12 to volunteer. They can stack the shelves and sort the donations,” says Yerger. “We’ve had a groundswell of support.”

It comes out of places such as St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, a longtime supporter of Neighborhood House and Southwest Hope, which holds regular food collection events, such as a Souper Bowl Sunday and an Italian dinner night.

“It’s not a holiday thing,” says Eva Calcagno of St. Barnabas. “A lot of people feel very generous during Christmas time, but hunger doesn’t go away in January.”

Calcagno’s son Max, a high school senior, is a coordinator of the church’s hunger events.

“For me it’s important for my kids to understand that their really very comfortable life is not the norm for everybody,” explains Calcagno, “but there are ways in this country to deal with that.”

It’s an interesting point.

In fact, it’s something to talk about.

David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or dsarasohn@oregonian.com. See other writing at oregonlive.com/sarasohn/

Students live rough for homeless

By: Afshan Ahmed

Muhammad Anjum, Ehsan Mohammadpour, Tiwa Omope, Waissuddin Fakherpour and Mahdi Shishehgar have joined the Five Days for the Homeless campaign. Pawan Singh / The National

DUBAI // Ehsan Mohammadpour hates asking for favours but it is the only way he can satisfy his hunger.

For the next five days, the 19-year-old student at the Canadian University of Dubai (CUD) will sit cross-legged on a sleeping bag beside a cardboard sign reading “HELP!”, relying on nothing more than the kindness of strangers to get food.

“It’s humiliating to ask for food. But if you don’t donate, we don’t eat,” said Mr Mohammadpour, who has set up camp inside the CUD grounds with four fellow squatters.

The students have joined the Five Days for the Homeless campaign, in which 24 universities in Canada will take part this month.

It aims to raise money to support homeless people around the world.

The campaign was founded as part of a student initiative at the University of Alberta School of Business, but became a nationwide cause in Canada in 2008.

This is the first time universities outside Canada have participated.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston is also taking part.

Mr Mohammadpour said they were inspired to join after witnessing poverty in their home countries.

“You don’t see homeless people here, but I have lived in Iran and have witnessed their situation there.”

He and his friends will camp on the CUD sports grounds for 24 hours a day, without any money or access to technology.

They will rely on handouts for food and any cash they are given will go to charity. They can take short breaks for lectures and to use the bathroom.

Tiwa Ompe, 21, an e-Business student, joined the cause in memory of a Canadian beggar.

“A year ago, while on my way to school in Canada, I saw a homeless person as I was on my way to catch the subway,” he said. “On my return, I saw the same guy being carried away by the paramedics. He was dead. That shook me.”

Mahdi Shishehgar, a marketing student, is the only one allowed to keep a mobile phone for the group’s safety.

He said removing luxuries was the only way to understand the plight of a homeless person.

“It’s tough looking for food when you know you can’t just buy it, or not having a shelter,” he said. “We are trying to experience that but also, through it, do our best to help those who are actually homeless.”

Mr Shishehgar said he would miss Facebook the most. “How do you live without it? This is going to be a testing time.”

Mohammad Anjum, 17, a telecommunication engineering student, said his biggest concern was being unable to bathe for five days.

“When we were visited by one of the founders of the campaign two weeks ago, he said the second and third day would be the toughest because that’s when reality kicks in,” said Mr Anjum. “We may not be able to feel the same psychological and physical trauma, but he told us to stay genuine.”

The students hope to raise between CA$5,000 and $10,000 (Dh18,000 to Dh37,000) for Homeless International. “We have managed to raise about Dh1,000 and believe our friends and sponsors will pitch in during the week,” said Mr Ompe.

Victor Esposito, managing director of the national campaign in Canada, said: “What makes this campaign unique is that it is all about communities supporting communities. We want to ensure that the money collected goes back to local charities and non-profit organisations [and not one global fund].

“We hope to expand to more universities in future years. This campaign has grown so much over the past few years and we expect it to continue growing”

The campaign in Canada, supported by more than 24 campuses this year, aims to raise CA$280,000 (Dh1,038,000) this year. Kamal Fodil, vice president of students affairs at CUD, said this week would be a lesson in empathy for the five students.

“They will understand the hardship for someone living on the streets, especially in countries and cities with extreme temperatures,” said Mr Fodil, who worked as a counsellor in Canada.

“Despite not seeing many such cases here, it is good to see how dedicated they are to the cause.”

For Mr Mohammadpour, giving up his favourite food for the next few days will be his biggest challenge.

“I feel really bad that I have to ask my friends to get me something to eat but I am already hungry. Can someone get me a KFC?”

aahmed@thenational.ae

Volunteers work to feed seniors

JONESBORO, AR (KAIT)-Members of the Jonesboro Young Professionals Network were out in full force at the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas on Thursday.

The Senior Pack Program provides a 20 pound box of food every other week for an entire year to a sponsored senior.

Director of Development for the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas, Vicki Pillow, says the need in Northeast Arkansas is huge.

“”Feeding America recently did a survey,” Pillow said. “It showed that 3 million senior citizens in the country are having to face choices between buying food or paying the rent, or buying food and paying their utilities. And 9 out of 10 of those seniors live in the South. And Arkansas continually has one of the highest rates of hunger in the country.”

One of the volunteers and a member of the JYPN, Cory McDaniel, says the number of people in need is overwhelming.

“It’s staggering,” McDaniel said. “It’s wild. It’s something I think a lot of people ignore because they don’t think it’s around here. In your day to day life I think people purposely go out of their way not to see those things, but they’re everywhere. So, it’s really not surprising to me, but it’s sad.

JYPN volunteer Courtney Shackelford was aware of the need in the Region 8 area and feels everyone should do whatever they can to help.

“Hungry seniors, that’s just not acceptable,” Shackelford said. “They should be helped. We should support them. And those of us who are able and have the time and the means to do it, there’s no reason not to.”

The Senior Pack Program has been made possible through the Wal-Mart Foundation state giving grant of $35, 000.

Pillow says they were able to include additional items with the money they’ve not been able to before.

“These funds were used to purchase more nutritious foods for the food boxes,” Pillow said. “Examples of the foods are whole grain pasta, healthier choices of soup and spinach. And we’ve been able to expand our canned vegetable selection to include canned carrots, which previously were too expensive for us.”

Right now, the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas has enough money to feed 160 Region 8 seniors.

However, Pillow says there is a waiting list of 43 seniors trying to get on who need help and are going hungry.

You can sponsor a senior for $150 a year.

One can also donate some of the needed food items to fill a seniors box.

For more information on how you can help, you can contact the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas by calling 870-932-3663 or 870-932-FOOD.

To log onto their website, click here.

Copyright 2012 KAIT. All rights reserved.

Kangaroo Express Helps Fill Pantries

Raises more than $53,000 for Second Harvest North Florida

By: CSP Daily News

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Pantry’s Kangaroo Express convenience store customers struck a mighty blow in the ongoing fight against hunger during the final two months of 2011, creating 371,637 meals for local families through an in-store promotion benefiting Second Harvest North Florida, the Jacksonville area Feeding America food bank.

Donations were collected in more than 100 Kangaroo Express store locations in the Jacksonville area in November and December. The donations–totaling $53,091.68–were raised with partner support from Champion Brands and MillerCoors. Kangaroo Express regional sales director Robert Lopez presented the check to Second Harvest executive director Bruce Ganger during an event on Friday, March 2.

“This donation is critical,” Ganger said. “We want to thank Kangaroo Express, MillerCoors and Champion Brands for their support of Second Harvest, their support of the mission of feeding hungry people and for their partnership moving forward. This donation will make an immediate impact. Thousands of families will have a meal on their table as a result of this. We intend to put it to good use immediately.”

Champion Brands and MillerCoors helped spearhead the campaign, developing the concept and quickly putting it into place prior to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

“This program started as an idea from our MillerCoors chain team for Kangaroo Express,” said Brett Preston of Champion Brands. “We were able to work locally with Will Rice, Robert Lopez and Second Harvest to customize as well as expand it for the Jacksonville market. We gathered all the Kangaroo Express management and watched a video on all the amazing things Second Harvest is involved in and the people they help. We knew we wanted to be part of that. It was the Kangaroo Express management and employees that really drove this program home and collected over $53,000 in only six weeks.”

Kangaroo Express management and employees were happy with the outcome as well.

“Kangaroo Express is proud to present a donation to Second Harvest North Florida,” said Will Rice, Kangaroo Express division vice president. “The donations were collected from store guests in more than 100 store locations. We appreciate the opportunity to partner with Champion Brands and MillerCoors to support this campaign for our store guests and associates to help provide meals for north Floridians.”

Students bolster food bank shelves

By: Jerome Lessard

Instead of taking this Halloween, Indigo Christ and her friends wanted to give.

While most children strolled the streets with their parents and friends to gather candy Monday evening, the Grade 12 student at Moira Secondary School and her group of community-oriented students stepped up to help end hunger in Belleville by holding the school’s first Halloween for Hunger, Trick-or-Eat in support to the Gleaners Food Bank.

Between 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., Christ and a dozen of Moira students collected enough non-perishable food items to fill 12 shopping carts. Tuesday morning, the group was pleased and proud of their initiative’s turnout as volunteers from the Gleaners were sorting out a total of 701 kg in food donations.

“We thought that asking people who live in Moira’s neighbourhood to get non-perishable food items ready for pick up on Halloween night could be a good and different way to support our local food bank,” said Christ. “We handed out flyers in mail boxes in the Stanley Park division, on Farley Avenue, and north of Moira last week in the days leading to Halloween and we ended up collecting much more food than we expected.”

The student said one in six Canadian families’ income cannot cover their basic food necessities. Last Friday, Christ and her Halloween for Hunger team met with other students who were willing to collect food for those in need instead of gathering sweets.

“More than 25 percent of those who seek help from food banks are children and youth like us,” said Christ. “It made me think and that’s how we thought we could also use Halloween to support our food bank.”.

Christ and her friends were inspired by their fellow students at Bayside Secondary School (BSS) in Quinte West, who held their third annual Halloween for Hunger Monday evening.

Fifty students from BSS’s leadership class went door-to-door to homes in Bayside, Belleville, Frankford, Stirling and Trenton to collect about 2,500 non-perishable food items (314 Kilograms), which were donated to Gleaners Food Bank, Trenton Care & Share Food Bank, and the Stirling Community Cupboard.

“Helping others is never out of style at Bayside,” said Emily Young, teacher at Bayside Secondary School. “This is our third Halloween for Hunger campaign and each year it seems to run a little more smoothly. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to show students the value of supporting the local community. It helps them to understand the issues facing many families.”

Adrianna Mackay and Kelsie Sills, student organizers of the annual Halloween food drive at Bayside are proud to have set a precedent for fighting against hunger in the Quinte area. Young said that in 2010, Bayside became the first high school in Canada to organize Meal Exchange’s 24-Hours for Hunger campaign — then raising $10,000 for local food banks and the school’s Food for Learning Program.

“It’s cool that we are able to show people in our community that teens are aware of the issue of hunger and that we want to do something to help out”, said Mackay.

An annual survey released by Food Banks Canada this week shows the number of Canadians using food banks has declined slightly, but persistent demand indicates many are struggling in a frail economic recovery.

According to the association’s survey, more than 851,000 individuals visited a food bank in March alone — a number that’s little changed from last year’s record and still 26 per cent above pre-recession levels.

“I think we’re coming out of a recession, but those numbers are telling us that many Canadians, and people here in Quinte, are still really struggling,” said Susanne Quinlan, director of operations at Gleaners.

Quinlan added that food donations made through Halloween for Hunger initiatives are more than welcome and help her and team of volunteers filling the shelves of the food banks’ warehouse in the months leading to the Christmas holidays.

“It was great to see all the food items that the students from Moira and Bayside collected in just one evening Monday,” said Quinlan. “We were down by four tonnes after our last food drive in October, so these Halloween donations are greatly appreciated and help us getting our inventory back to normal.”

-With files from QMI Agency

jlessard@intelligencer.ca

Food-bank use higher than before recession: Report

By: Jordan Press and Bradley Bouzane

n its annual report, Food Banks Canada said that each month, about 700,000 Canadians rely on food banks, or about two per cent of the population. Photograph by: File, Postmedia News

While food banks from coast to coast hoped to see a reduction in strain as Canada pulled itself out of the 2008 recession, little or no progress has been made, according to a new report.

The number of Canadians relying on food banks to feed themselves and their families remains substantially higher than it was before the recession, according to HungerCount 2011, which was released Tuesday by Food Banks Canada.

Katharine Schmidt, executive director of Food Banks Canada, said food banks across the country were optimistic the situation would have eased by now, but are instead seeing an opposite effect.

“We’re very concerned with the number of people that we’re seeing come to food banks three years later (after the 2008 recession),” Schmidt said Tuesday. “Numbers have gone up by 26 per cent since 2008 and . . . every month, we’re seeing 90,000 Canadians who had never entered a food bank come in.

“At this stage, we had hoped to start to see the numbers decline and, sadly, that hasn’t been the case.”

In its annual report, Food Banks Canada said that each month, about 700,000 Canadians, or about two per cent of the population, rely on food banks.

That represents a small drop compared to the previous year, despite some upswing in the economy during that time.

Overall food-bank use dropped nationally by two per cent from 2010, but still has not returned to pre-recession levels recorded in 2008, says the report.

A little more than one-third — 38 per cent — of food-bank users were under the age of 18; 10 per cent identified themselves as First Nations, Metis or Inuit and four per cent were post-secondary students, according to the report.

About half of food-bank users relied on social assistance for an income, while five per cent had no income at all, the report said. Two-thirds of food-bank users are renters, seven per cent are homeowners and six per cent are homeless, the report says.

The report makes seven recommendations for governments to make it easier for Canadians to pay for food.

They include having the federal and provincial governments invest in affordable housing, overhauling social assistance and employment insurance and investing in early childhood education.

“One of the key things we hear right across the country at every food bank . . . is the cost of housing (being the biggest hurdle),” Schmidt said. “Affordable housing is one of the keys. When you start paying 40 to 60 or 65 per cent of your total income on housing, it means there isn’t much left over to actually provide food for your family.”

“We’d really like to look to government for some leadership and some investment to reduce poverty, which we believe in the long run, will start to bring down some of the health-care and social costs.”

The findings are based on surveys sent out earlier this year. The organization sent surveys to 1,943 known food banks across the country in February. A total of 1,723 food banks filled out the survey, a response rate of 89 per cent.

Food Banks Canada chose March for the study period because it is a relatively unexceptional month for food-bank use, without any predictable peaks or valleys in use.

bbouzane@postmedia.com

jpress@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/jordan_press

B.C. MLA walks the walk in war on poverty

By: Mark Hume

NDP MLA Jagrup Brar is two weeks into his challenge to live on the equivalent of welfare income for a month. Rafal Gerszak for The Globe and Mail

At the halfway point of his month-long journey into poverty, Jagrup Brar says the hardest thing is dealing with the depressing reality of having almost no money, no food and no hope, day after day.

And things just got worse, as the New Democrat MLA who set out to highlight poverty in British Columbia has now moved into a bleak little room in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where he has a one-burner stove, a mattress on a cold floor – and a bathroom down the hall that he shares with 11 other men.

Mr. Brar is attempting to live on the $610 that a single employable person living on welfare receives in B.C. each month. For the first two weeks, he was in a house in Surrey he shared with eight welfare recipients.

“That was a seven-star hotel by comparison,” he said on Tuesday.

He said he doesn’t really know what to expect in moving into Canada’s poorest neighborhood, but judging by what he’s faced so far, it’s going to be a tough two weeks.

“Living in poverty is hard and demoralizing because hunger breaks your body and fear breaks your spirit. That’s what happens … it’s tough every morning you get up. It’s like you’re preparing for going to a war,” he said as he trudged to his new home in B.C. Rooms, a bleak walk-up near Oppenheimer Park.

His room, No. 305, is 3.3 metres by 3.3 metres. It has a sink, a small table, two battered chairs and a fridge that apparently doesn’t work.

Frank Stuart, one of Mr. Brar’s new neighbours, said he is lucky to be getting into one of the better single-room-occupancy buildings in the area.

“It’s not bad,” said Mr. Stuart, who pays $425 in rent, which he draws from the $610 he gets each month. He calculates that after deducting rent and money for bus tickets, he’s left with $4.15 a day on which to live.

“It’s a quiet building. The bad thing is that at night you’ve got to run the gauntlet of pretty aggressive drug dealers. They are on the front steps, at the door, all down the block,” he said.

At 6-foot-4, Mr. Brar, a player for the Indian national basketball team before immigrating to Canada, should be able to take care of himself.

He said his big concern isn’t the people on the streets of the Downtown Eastside, but the daily grind of trying to stay healthy on a limited food budget.

“Everyday life is a struggle when you are poor. People have to make hard choices between food and other necessary items every day,” he said.

The married father of two young children said he often feels weary and suspects the cause is a lack of proper nutrition.

He carried two bags with him in his move. In one was a blanket, and in the other a box of cereal, a few eggs and a jar of peanut butter.

Mr. Brar said one of the things he’s learned so far is just how difficult it is for someone to work their way out of poverty.

“The challenge when you are living on a very limited amount of money is that you don’t have much time to find a job. Basically, just surviving for a day is a struggle,” he said.

Mr. Brar said it’s disturbing there are no earning exemptions for welfare recipients who find part-time work.

“I don’t think that makes sense,” he said. “There should be an incentive for people to find a part-time job, brush up their skills and that could lead to a full time job.”

Mr. Brar said he will spend his days talking to people about their lives.

“I spent my first 15 days in Surrey and I met a lot of people there, including homeless mothers, low-income farm workers, refugees, vulnerable youth … listening to their stories is very hard and painful,” he said, adding he expects more of the same in Vancouver.

Mr. Brar said he misses sitting in the evening talking with his wife, Rajwant, seeing his 11-year-old daughter, Noor, off to school in the morning, and watching nature films with his son, Fateh, who is four years old.

Mr. Brar’s project, which he undertook in response to a challenge issued by Raise the Rates, an anti-poverty agency, comes 25 years after the late Emery Barnes, a popular New Democrat MLA, did the same thing to draw attention to poverty and low welfare rates in B.C.

Free lunch program enrollment rises with poverty, unemployment

By: Sarah Hofius Hall, staff writer

The effects of poverty and unemployment are being seen in school cafeterias throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.

Across the region, more students are relying on free or reduced-price lunches at school now more than ever. In the last decade, the number of students who are enrolled in the subsidized lunch program has increased 56 percent, from 36,119 to 56,304, in Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties.

Area school officials say they see the hunger every day in children who receive those lunches. For some, it’s their only meal of the day, educators believe.

In the Scranton School District, which has 60 percent of its students in the lunch program, all elementary students can receive a free breakfast. In the past decade the percentage of students in the lunch program has increased 42 percent.

Children whose families with incomes up to 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free lunches in the federal program. Children in families whose income is between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price lunches. For this school year, a family of four with an annual income of less than $29,055 would qualify for free lunch. An income of $41,348 qualifies a family of four for reduced-price lunches.

Matt Sfarra, general manager for Aramark, Scranton’s food-service provider, said while the district saw its percentage go from 59 to only 60 in the past year, he is seeing more of those eligible students actually eat lunch.

This summer, more than 2,100 children received lunches each weekday through the district’s summer food-service program.

In some large urban areas across the country, schools are starting after-school dinner programs or weekend programs, in which students are given food on Fridays to eat throughout the weekend.

Aramark is in initial talks with the district about possibly piloting an evening meal program, Mr. Sfarra said.

“It’s something we’re very interested in,” he said.

After a weekend, Scranton cafeteria workers can see the hunger in students.

“When we come in Monday morning, the ladies may make a few extra items because students are really hungry,” Mr. Sfarra said.

Mr. Sfarra estimates another 10 percent of district students qualify but are not enrolled in the program, sometimes out of embarrassment or other times because of a lack of information or a language barrier. He encourages parents to contact their children’s school office for an application.

“There shouldn’t be any fear in doing it,” he said. “Really it’s a great way to make sure their child gets at least two good meals a day.”

In Lackawanna County, more than 11,340 households are living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008-2010 American Community Survey released this fall.

The effects of poverty are more than hunger, Scranton Superintendent William King said. Some students come to school without coats or hats, he said.

In the Blue Ridge School District, which has seen enrollment in the lunch program grow 70 percent in the last decade, free breakfast is offered to every student in grades kindergarten through eighth.

The district is also looking at grants to set up and maintain a food pantry, Superintendent Robert McTiernan said.

At Mid Valley, which has seen the number of students in the program grow 51 percent in the last decade, a breakfast program has been created and establishing a summer program has been discussed, Superintendent Randy Parry said.

“As the poverty level goes up, the school district needs to have some kind of responsibility to help out in those areas,” he said.

Contact the writer: shofius@timesshamrock.com

Christensen lives a week on food stamps

By: Aldeth Lewin

ST. THOMAS – To put herself in the shoes of those who live in poverty, V.I. Delegate to Congress Donna Christensen spent a week living only on the national average weekly food stamp allotment – $31.50.

The National Food Stamp Challenge, organized by Fighting Poverty with Faith, started Oct. 27 and ended Thursday.

“I was hungry most of the time. I’m hungry right now,” Christensen told The Daily News on Wednesday.

The lesson she learned from the experience?

“That it’s hard to live on food stamps,” she said.

The National Food Stamp Challenge was created four years ago by several faith organizations to bring national attention to poverty in America by encouraging people to share in the struggle for one week. Christensen was one of a number of Washington lawmakers who participated.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program, provides assistance to more than 45 million people nationwide.

In the Virgin Islands, 9,922 households – 23,684 individuals – participate in SNAP.

To be eligible for SNAP benefits, an applicant’s net monthly income must be no more than the federal poverty guidelines. In Fiscal Year 2011, a household of three could earn no more than $1,384 in net income per month.

According to Lydia Rhymer, director of support services at the V.I. Human Services Department, the income requirement was raised for FY 2012 to $1,545.

Rhymer said $4.2 million in SNAP benefits were paid out to Virgin Islands residents in FY 2011.

While Christensen had to live on $31.50 – the national average used in the challenge – V.I. residents with no income receive about $64.25 per week, Rhymer said.

Christensen bought most of her food in Washington, D.C., where food prices tend to be less expensive. When she traveled to St. Croix for Bull and Bread Day, the delegate brought food with her that she had made.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture establishes the monthly SNAP benefit amounts, which are higher for people who live in the territory than those who reside on the mainland because food prices here are higher.

Two of Christensen’s staffers, Shanna O’Reilly and Shelley Thomas, also participated in the challenge.

“Once I decided I was going to do it, I realized I really had to plan,” Christensen said. “It was very hard, and it took a lot of planning to be able to stay within that $31.50.”

She spent more time grocery shopping than usual, shopping around for the best prices and thinking about each purchase she made.

The first challenge was getting her daily coffee fix. She knew she could not afford to buy the $6.99 can of ground coffee she usually would, but she found a package of seven single serve packets for 99 cents.

She also began the week by buying a whole chicken, and she used every single part of it by the week’s end. Out of one chicken she made sandwiches, several dinners and soup. On the last day of the week, she used the gizzards and back to make chicken and rice.

A single potato was stretched out across three meals – french fries, mashed potatoes and a sauté with onions and leftover vegetables.

She was also humbled by the choices she had to make. Wanting to make a soup with bok choy, she stood in the supermarket knowing she could not afford the $1.99 for the whole head. She asked a store employee if she could take a few leaves off a head and pay for them, but the employee was not sure and Christensen did not want to bother the store manager – so she left without the vegetable.

She did end up using a few leaves left over from her daughter, but calculated the “purchase” at 60 cents on her food budget.

Read more: Christensen lives a week on food stamps

Growing poverty causes childhood hunger

By: Angela Cunningham

Food basket in a food bank.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WZZM) –Frightening new numbers out show the number of Americans living in extreme poverty has reached a new record. The US Census Bureau reports 20.5 million people, that’s one in 15, have fallen below 50% of the official US poverty level. That represents an annual income of about $11,000 year for a family of four.

“That is an enormous number. In West Michigan 1 in 4 children faces hunger every single day. These are huge poverty numbers,” said Bridget Clark Whitney, executive director for Kids’ Food Basket.

The agency provides balanced meals to some of the areas most vulnerable children at 32 local elementary schools.

Friday, employees picked up the keys to a brand new Toyota Tundra the agency won in the Toyota 100 Cars For Good contest. Clark Whitney says the truck will replace one recently lost in an accident and will save them about $30,000. That’s enough money to feed an entire school. She says that is really important right now considering the demand for services has never been greater.

“The bottom line is our number continue to go up. The need continues to go up and we really needed this vehicle,” she said. “We are serving, right now, 4,330 children each weekday throughout the school year and throughout the summer. Those numbers are huge. If you could imagine the quantities for a very nutritious sack dinner with five food groups. lots of fruits and vegetables .as much local food as we can possibly get, those quantities are huge and we need these vehicles to be able to transport food back and forth from Feeding America, other food banks, local growers and local vendors.”

She says they routinely have about 10 or 11 schools on their waiting list. At one point, that number has jumped up at one point to having 27 schools on the waiting list.

“Each one of these elementary schools we serve has well over 80 percent of their students living at or below poverty level,” she said. “We know that in Kent County, 37,000 kids are living below poverty level in ‘food-insure’ households, which is a home which simply doesn’t have enough food.”

“They are eating breakfast at school because there may not be food to eat at breakfast. They are eating what is served at school for the lunch program, and then to be a child, and think, ‘I might go home and there is not enough food to eat’, what child needs to worry about that? That is a hard thing on a kid,” said Catrina Harvey, program coordinator for the agency.

Harvey says when she goes into the schools, she is reminded of how important is that work they do.

“Nobody wants to see a child hungry. I don’t care if it is your own. I don’t care if it is your neighbors. Nobody wants to see a child hungry, because it is heartbreaking and this is our community and it is on Grand Rapids to take care of our Kent County community,” she said.

Harvey says she has the privilege of working with Kids’ Food Basket now, but just a short while ago she could have very well been on the receiving end.

“Honestly, as a parent of six kids and I’m a widow, I know what it is like to lose an income in my household and my kids know what it is like to be hungry,” she said. “I have walked that walk, so I understand from a parent’s perspective and my kids understand from a kid’s perspective. It is hard. It is difficult to think about not having food, and on top of that, you have to learn and everything. That’s hard. As a parent, it is hard because you have to decide, ‘do I pay bills or do I feed my children? Do I pay rent or get my car fixed or do I feed my children?’”

And she says it could happen to anyone at any time.

“It could take a loss of a parent. It could take a job loss. It could be anything that changes your circumstance and ultimately this could be you,” said Harvey.

She says it is a situation no parent or child should have to endure.