Hunger in America's Classrooms: Share Our Strength's Teacher Project
Author:
Celia Cole /(512) 320-0222 x110
September 4, 2009
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This summer, Share Our Strength, a national organization that works to prevent child hunger in America, is talking with teachers across the country about child hunger in their classrooms. The Hunger in America's Classrooms: Share Our Strength's Teacher Project is intended to raise awareness about child hunger in America and build a movement of Americans dedicated to ending it. You can help by spreading the word to teachers across Texas.
How You Can Help
If you are a teacher who has experienced child hunger in your classroom, tell Share our Strength about it by taking a brief online survey at www.strength.org/teachers. And, if you know a teacher or teachers who would willing to help Share our Strength tell this important story, please forward this alert to them.
About Share Our Strength
Share Our Strength is a national organization whose mission is to make sure no kid in America grows up hungry. Through a network of community groups, activists and food programs, Share Our Strength identifies children at risk of hunger and provides them with nutritious food where they live, learn and play. Share our Strength works hand-in-hand with the culinary industry to create engaging, pioneering programs to raise funds and awareness to end child hunger in the United States. To learn more about Share Our Strength and its work, please visit www.strength.org.
Child Hunger in Texas and the United States
More than 12.4 million—one in six—children in the United States are at risk of hunger. In Texas, more than one in five (22.1 percent) children lives in a household facing hunger, the highest rate in the nation.
Children endure lifelong consequences as a result of having limited access to nutritious foods. For example, they are more likely to suffer poorer health, hospitalizations, behavioral difficulties and impaired performance at school.
Hunger also affects our economic competitiveness by impeding children’s ability to grow into healthy, educated and productive adults. A recent study by the University Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University estimated that hunger costs Texas more than $9 billion annually in charity, illness, and lowered productivity.
The Obama Administration wants to end child hunger by 2015 (obama.3cdn.net/c4b14802fd5e66ee67_xum6bn6nu.pdf). Increasing our investment in the federal child nutrition programs—school meals; the summer, after school and child care food programs; and WIC—will be necessary to meet this goal. Congress is set to reauthorize the child nutrition programs this year, providing the opportunity to increase our nation’s commitment to preventing hunger and improving children’s nutritional health. CPPP’s recommendations for child nutrition reauthorization are on our website at www.cppp.org. For regular updates and to take action on child nutrition reauthorization, see www.frac.org.