Each backpack contains about 3 3/4 lbs of food (about 1.7 kilos). There was a small jar of peanut butter, a sleeve of crackers, a small box of shelf-stable milk, another of chocolate milk, another box of fruit juice, a pack of almonds, a small bowl of applesauce, one of those self-contained bowls of cereal, a pack of dried fruit, and one of those fruit-cereal bars. The USDA considers 1 1/3 lbs (that's around 600 grams, doing the conversion in my head) of food to be a meal, so there's just under three meals there. I don't know about the nutritional content, but it seems to be pretty balanced. It might be sufficient for three meals for a younger child, maybe kindergarten through 3rd grade, but probably not enough for an older child.
The Regional Food Bank started the Food for Kids backpack program in 2003, following a story from an Oklahoma City elementary school principal about one of their students who had fainted in the school lunch line on a Monday. When questioned, the principal found that the child had not eaten all weekend, not since lunchtime at school the previous Friday. The child's family was in dire financial straits, and they had no food in the home.
The program provides chronically hungry school children (identified by school personnel) with these backpacks, on Fridays and before school holidays, so they'll have at least something to eat over the weekend. The children then return the backpacks on Monday, and the Regional Food Bank makes sure there's food to restock them for the next weekend.
Since 2003, when the program served just 5 Oklahoma City schools and 180 students, the program has grown to cover 305 elementary schools, in 42 counties across central and western Oklahoma, serving more than 10,000 students every week of the school year.
I'll quote from their website:
"Since there is a critical connection between childhood nutrition and cognitive and physical development, even nutritional deficiencies of a relatively short-term nature negatively impact a child's health, behavior, and the ability to concentrate and perform complex tasks. In additon, going without food can cause behavioral and psychological effects such as depression, aggression, anxiety, and poor social skills in children. Food is the most essential school supply. Hungry children cannot learn."
Of course, being centered around schools, that still leaves the kids at risk of going hungry during the summer. The Regional Food Bank also supports other programs (MANY others), some of which do address this need during the summer months.
Now, I don't know where you might be, you who are reading this, and I don't know what the situation is like in your community. I do know that this is a significant problem here in Oklahoma; we rank in the bottom 5 states in the US in terms of 'food security', people regularly getting enough to eat. Deindustrialization has hit hard here (I'll address that topic in another post) and many of the good-paying jobs are gone, and what's replaced them are lower-paying service-sector jobs. The net result is that our state is poorer than it used to be, and that reflects in people not having enough to eat.
The Regional Food Bank's data shows that their average recipient of assistance is in a family of three, with at least one adult working at least one job (and frequently more than one job). The average annual income for these families is $11,440, well below the poverty line. Less than 20% are unemployed, and nearly 1/3 are disabled or retired (this data is from across all of the Regional Food Bank's programs, not just Food for Kids). So it's not a case of those hoary old stories of 'welfare mamas' that some people assume; these are generally decent working people who simply cannot get a job to make enough, at least at this point in their lives, to feed themselves and their kids. Most telling is the fact that of those families with children served by the Regional Food Bank, 56% of adults stated that they (the parents) sometimes had to skip meals because there was not enough money for food, but only 11% stated that their children had to skip meals because of a lack of money for food. So there's a whole lot of moms and dads out there, doing without so their kids can eat. And all it takes is one major illness, one car wreck (and you know that if they're having trouble putting food on the table, they're not going to have full coverage on their car), and they're in even worse shape. And there are thousands, and thousands, of people like this out there; across the United States, there's easily a couple of million people in situations like this (if not more).
Now . . . let's put this into perspective in terms of the budget crisis and the debt ceiling debate. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, there's no real way out of this financial mess we've collectively created over the past 40 years without massive cuts in federal spending coupled with significant tax increases. The SNAP program, the one that used to be known as food stamps, that's a federal program (the benefits portion is fully funded by the federal government, and the feds pay for nearly half of a state's cost to administer the program). And it could very well see additional budget cuts. That means there's less money for food for each of the recipients. (And according to a Food Research and Action Center study, in 2007 there were 13 million more people who were eligible for SNAP but had not signed up--and that's before the recession hit, too--so there are untold millions more not on SNAP that are not 'food secure', to use the government term for being hungry.)
[And yes, I've seen the stories of people buying steak and lobster on SNAP cards--which speaks to a need to reform the SNAP program to prevent such abuse, NOT that it should be eliminated or that everyone who's on it is a louse that's milking the government for everything they can get. And in that particular case, the individual who bought the steak and lobster--with the intent to resell it--was caught and has been charged with welfare fraud, and faces up to 5 years in prison if convicted.]
There's a whole bunch of those federal 'safety net' programs that are potentially going to get cut, and cut back hard. The folks up on Capitol Hill keep bandying around figures like $4 trillion in cuts, $2 trillion in cuts, $9 trillion in cuts--where do you think those cuts are going to come from? Do you know that if you were to spend $1 million a day, each and every day, since the time Christ was born until now, that you still wouldn't have spent even $1 trillion? Even with inflation, a trillion dollars is still a whole lot of money.
And every tax increase reduces the amount that can be spent on other things, like food for example. Even if we tax the hell out of the rich, it still won't generate enough revenue; some of the tax increases are going to have to be borne by each and every American, including the working poor. So in years to come they'll have even less to spend on food, for themselves and for their kids.
And if we're to have any hope whatsoever for the future of our nation, we need to be paying a lot more attention to our kids, and to their education. What they learn in our schools is fundamental to what they'll be able to do as adults. If we wish the United States to continue to be the powerhouse of innovation, of research and discovery, of entrepreneurship, and of social justice that it has been in the past, we need to ensure that our schools are up to the task, and that our students are ready to learn--and if they're hungry it's just that much more difficult to accomplish the more lofty goals of education.
So . . . the need for programs like the Food for Kids backpacks, and organizations like the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, is only going to go up and up. So, wherever you're at, won't you please take a look around and find an organization like ours here in Oklahoma City that helps those less fortunate? Even if you don't have any money to donate (I know I'm stretched pretty thin), you can donate something that's far more valuable--your time. All of us, regardless of the size of our bank account, only get 24 hours in a day. Volunteer labor helps groups like this to keep their costs down. The need for this is universal, I suspect, even far beyond the borders of the United States.
I suppose it comes down to a basic question: is there too much suffering in the world? And, are you willing to do something about it? It goes beyond being a good Christian, or a good Muslim, or Jew, or Buddhist, or any other religion I know of; it's a 'decent human being' thing to do, to help relieve the suffering of others. It's even being a good atheist; those who suffer are more likely to commit crimes than those who are happy and content, and even atheists are victims of crime.
Together with a group from Griffin Communications (which owns the local CBS affiliate, KWTV Channel 9, here in Oklahoma City, and KOTV Channel 6 in Tulsa, and others as well--you can't say enough good things about that company, and maybe I'll do a post on them later, too) last night we collectively bagged up 1,584 backpacks of food for the start of the school year, which starts, for Oklahoma City Public Schools and Putnam City Public Schools here in the metro area, this next Monday, August 1st. So that's 1,584 Oklahoma school kids who will have at least something to eat next weekend, out of a need for 10,000+. What about the rest? And what about the following weekend? And the one after that? Are you willing to help?
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