Understanding Childhood Hunger

Share Our Strength's Strategy to End Childhood Hunger

TO SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE CHILDHOOD HUNGER, YOU HAVE TO START WITH A STRONG, THOUGHTFUL PLAN OF ATTACK.

At Share Our Strength, our strategic plan to end childhood hunger focuses on three primary areas:

  • Increasing access to public and private programs that provide food to children and their families.
  • Strengthening community resources that connect children to healthy food.
  • Improving families' knowledge about available programs and how to get the most from limited resources.

Since 2004, childhood hunger has been our focus and priority. With the help of many, we've made significant progress including:

  1. Established four state childhood hunger partnerships. Each has published its own plan for ending childhood hunger, modeled after Share Our Strength's national strategic plan:
  2. On November 24, 2008, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and Share Our Strength Founder Billy Shore announced the Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in Maryland. Gov. O'Malley vowed to become the first state to end childhood hunger in America, and named the Governor's Office for Children as the lead state agency in the partnership. The Partnership has laid out one-year goals in its four focus areas:
    • Increasing the number of households with kids who receive food stamp benefits
    • Increasing the number of summer meals served
    • Increasing the number if children who receive school breakfast
    • Increasing the number of licensed child care centers who participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program.
  3. Since 2006, The Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in the Nation's Capital has achieved the following:
    • Worked with schools so that an average of 20,000 children get school breakfast each day.
    • Helped schools replace standard vending machine fare with healthier food options.
    • Implemented a program that allows low-income families to use their SNAP (food stamps) debit cards at area farmers markets.
    • Added more than 1,500 women to WIC roles.
    • Implemented a corner market study on the availability of fruits and vegetables to at-risk families.
    • Increased participation in summer meals to a record 29,000 children.
    • Tripled participation in after-school food programs to more than 9,000 children.
    • Enrolled 15 new childcare centers in nutrition programs so that 300 more children get breakfast and lunch every day.
  4. The Florida Partnership to End Childhood Hunger has successfully advocated for passage of The Willie Glenn Act which is bringing a summer meal site to within five miles of every elementary school in the state.
    • Today, all 68 counties in Florida now have summer meal programs--up from 30 in 2004.
  5. In its early months, End Childhood Hunger Washington posted these accomplishments:
    • Expanded Basic Food (food stamp) eligibility to an expected 23,000 more families.
    • Increased access to fresh produce through farm-to-school programs, farm-to-food bank pilots and farmers markets participating in WIC, Basic Food and senior nutrition programs.
    • Support for 18 rural summer meal programs in high-need areas.
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer coverage of the Partnership and its work.
  6. Working with Share Our Strength, the U.S. Conference of Mayors signed a referendum committing to ending childhood hunger in the United States.
  7. Our grants to organizations across the country, raised through Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation®, Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale® and Share Our Strength's Great American Dine Out®, support our national childhood hunger strategy.
  8. In 2008, Share Our Strength served more than 6 million children facing hunger through our grant recipients and state childhood hunger partnerships, 4 million more than in 2007.

Help us do more to fight this battle that's big enough to be important, yet small enough to win.

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