Childhood Hunger

As a community with a nation, every adult has a timeless responsibility to help vulnerable populations, most particularly children. If we agree on this point, it is a start, and place to move to the next point. Children have different nutritional needs from adults. Proper nutrition is a prime ingredient for helping them to avoid the consequences that poor nutrition can have on their economic security as adults.

• Approximately ten million children are getting food from either a pantry, kitchen or shelter operating in "America's Second Harvest" network .

• Among all members of households that are helped by America's Second Harvest (A.S.H.), one in every eleven recipients are under the age of six. SIX!

• Three of every four households helped by A.S.H. with children under the age of 18 are food insecure; climbing up to three million households nationally.

• Among all of these particular households, 18.4% of the food clients averred that their child/children had skipped meals within the last 12 months because there wasn't enough money for food.

• Nearly one in ever four shelter clients indicated that their child/children was/were hungry at least once during the previous year but couldn't afford more food. Regardless of a parent's ability or skill in obtaining food, children do not deserve to go to sleep hungry.

• More than a quarter of all client households stated that their child/children were sometimes or often not eating enough during the previous 12 months because they just couldn't afford enough food; an estimated 0.9 million households.

• Among all client households with at least one child under the age of 18; 63.2% utilize the school lunch program and 49.9% the school breakfast program.

• 52.5% of all client households with at least one child age 0 to 5 are enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC); an increase from 31% in 1997.

• 61.9% of agencies run feeding programs that target children only: Kids Cafes, youth after-school programs, child day care programs, and summer camps for low-income clients.

• 46.2% of pantry programs indicated there are "many more children in the summer," while 68.2% of kitchen programs indicated an increase during the same time of year.