The Hungry Children of Rowan County

Just about any time you turn on your television you could find a station where you’re being told of the many different areas in the world whose children are hungry. Childhood hunger, is not only a global and national issue. It is a huge problem in North Carolina and more specifically in Rowan County. I don’t think many people realize how close these areas truly are to their own backdoors and how many children in our own communities are going without the daily substance they need to build healthy minds and bodies. While there are a variety of federal and state nutritional programs which exist to feed children healthy meals during the school year. The need for programs to assist these children during the summer is great need.

The USDA's school meals programs help ensure all students have access to nutritious meals at school. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), a family is “food insecure” if it faces “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.”1 In 2011, 17.9 million U.S. households were food insecure – 14.9% of all households in the country.2 More importantly, households with children are nearly twice as likely to be food insecure as households without children. Although children are often shielded from hunger in food insecure households, over 3.9 million American families have children that have not had access to adequate, nutritious food.3 The crisis becomes even more pressing for families facing severe economic hardships. Over two-thirds of food insecure families have household incomes that are below $42,000 for a family of four (an income level that equals approximately 185% of the Federal poverty line for 2012), and over eighty percent of food insecure families participate in Federal food assistance...