This morning when you awoke, you probably quieted the growls of your hungry belly by eating breakfast. Most likely, as your stomach quieted, so did your thoughts of food. One of ATI’s training partners TrainingEtc has a community service program that ATIcourses wants to publicize. TrainingEtc teams with ATIcourses to offer both open enrollment and on-site […]
This morning when you awoke, you probably quieted the growls of your hungry belly by eating breakfast. Most likely, as your stomach quieted, so did your thoughts of food.
One of ATI’s training partners TrainingEtc has a community service program that ATIcourses wants to publicize. TrainingEtc teams with ATIcourses to offer both open enrollment and on-site Project Management and Computer courses. You can read more about their volunteer program at
http://www.trainingetc.com/illumanation/
Imagine the heart-wrenching scenario of waking in the morning with nothing to eat. The one loaf of bread you had for the week is already gone, and to make matters worse, your pantry is completely bare. Did I mention that it is only midweek? Not only are you forced to skip breakfast, but you have no idea what you’re going to eat for lunch or dinner today . . . and for the rest of the week. Food becomes an obsession as it consumes your thoughts and heightens your hunger. You worry about when you will eat again and from where your next meal will come.
This phenomenon, occurring in more than 17 million households in America today, is what’s known as Food Insecurity.
According to the USDA, food insecurity is where “availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or the ability to acquire such food, is limited or uncertain for a household.” This problem, along with Food Scarcity (the uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods to meet dietary needs), make up two of the biggest crises facing our nation today. The USDA reports that in Maryland, over 720,000 people live each day with food insecurity.
The Maryland Food Bank leads Maryland in working to end hunger and food insecurity for all of our residents. An affiliate of Feeding America, the Maryland Food Bank was founded in 1979 to “coordinate the procurement and distribution of food donations from manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and government agencies to organizations providing free food to the state’s hungry.”
In 2012, the Maryland Food Bank distributed 26.5 million pounds of food to Maryland residents, which is equivalent to 22 million meals!
The federal government’s attempt to alleviate the food insecurity faced by many in our nation today has been to offer $4.22 worth of food stamp assistance per day. However, the average cost for a single meal in this
area for one person is $2.66, totaling $7.98 per day. The $4.22 per day assistance is just not enough to eradicate the hunger in our nation. That number is even more staggering when compared to the $61 travel per diem allotted to those in federal civil service, indicating that the federal government deems $61 to be the acceptable amount to spend on meals each day.
As long as this extreme disparity exists between the assistance that the poor need and what they actually receive, we will be unable to eradicate hunger in this nation.
Bridge the Gap!
l Donate non-perishable food items for delivery to the Maryland Food Bank.
l Visit
www.mdfoodbank.org to get involved.
