Feeding Today's Children

The recent recession in today’s economy has affected the country on many levels. This recession has extended out to create losses of homes and 401K programs to companies downsizing, which creates the unemployment rate to skyrocket. In the city of Richmond alone, the unemployment rate has reached to 10.6% as of March 2010 (United States Department of Labor, n.d.). Effects of this nature create strains on local as well as global assistance programs. One local assistance program affected by the economy is the Central Virginia Food Bank program. The Central Virginia Food Bank assists families in need of food because of low-income situations. The Food Bank has seen a depletion of their surplus and an increase in demand more than anticipated. This depletion is occurring right at a time when the Food Bank just launched a Backpack for Children program. This program benefits families with children who have expressed an interest or need for supplemental assistance of food. A program of this sort must maintain funding to reach out to those families who have expressed a need. There are many pros to this program, along with many cons if this program would discontinue. It is imperative that the latter of the two is not visited.

The Central Virginia Backpack Program was started to address the situation of students in low-income families receiving subsidized meals within their schools, are candidates to potentially go hungry over the weekends. In our community, there are more than 10,000 children at risk of being hungry on the weekends (Central Virginia Food Bank, 2009). Once these children are identified, along with the cooperation of their local school deemed to be a high-poverty area, two days worth of food is given to the child on Fridays in a backpack to be returned on Monday morning. The purpose of the backpack is to provide the child with discretion for the time he or she is interacting with their peers at school. This program will create less of a strain on...