Fighting Hunger When All the Numbers Are Against You
Posted by Katherine Van Steenburgh on Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Warren Yoder, Executive Director,
Public Policy Center of Mississippi
Share Our Strength is sending a team on the road to visit summer meals sites we’ve funded throughout the country and to interview community leaders and Share Our Strength partners who fill the critical role of making sure hungry kids receive healthy meals while school is out. We hope you enjoy this series of posts from the road.
Here are a few facts that everyone should know about childhood hunger in Mississippi:
- Mississippi has the highest rate of food insecurity in the United States.
- BEFORE the recession, 17.4 percent of Mississippians struggled with food access.
- Only 5 percent of the kids in Mississippi who rely on school lunch get summer meals.
- Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the nation.
On our trip through the south, Alice Pennington and I spent two days with the Executive Director of the Public Policy Center (PPC) of Mississippi, Warren Yoder. Share Our Strength supported the PPC’s rebuilding efforts after Katrina and now supports its work to increase enrollment in meals programs.
Warren Yoder has dedicated his life to ending childhood hunger in the state with the most severe hunger. In rural Mississippi, he battles obstacles that include lack of transportation, generational poverty, insufficient resources, and deteriorating health due to hunger. When many would have called it quits, he presses on.
One our second day in Mississippi, we visited a childcare center in rural Lumberton that is now part of the USDA summer meals program due to PPC’s work.
During the summer, the PPC contacts every childcare provider in the state and works to enroll new sites in the national summer meals program. This saves the centers time and money, and it feeds more kids. Thanks to the PPC’s policy and enrollment work, more kids are eating lunch and breakfast in Mississippi this summer. To end childhood hunger, we need direct service organizations, but we also desperately need policy groups and leaders like Warren Yoder and the PPC.
Do you know of other public policy groups that are helping feed more kids this summer? Please share their story.
June 29, 2010 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: grantees, No Kid Hungry, poverty, summer meals
Post a comment
All fields are required (your e-mail address will not be displayed)