Hidden Hunger

When I was in 9th grade, my algebra teacher, if he noticed someone throwing away uneaten food, would say "Don't you know there are starving children in Bellingham!?" (Bellingham being a nearby town, a bit less well off than my wealthy white town but still doing pretty well). And the joke was "Ha ha, starving children in Bellingham, everyone knows that there aren't starving children in Massachusetts. Starving children is a problem for Africa and those places." Not a funny joke, really.

Now, before I continue, let me say this: there are, absolutely, huge hunger problems around the globe. It's very real, and it's terrifying. But the mission prompt is to write about my area, and Massachusetts is my area, so here we go.

Project Bread is a statewide non-profit dedicated to fighting hunger in Massachusetts (http://www.projectbread.org/). A few quick stats from their 2009 report (http://www.projectbread.org/site/DocServer/ProjectBread_StatusRepor...):

- There has been an increase in food insecurity and food insecurity with hunger in the 2006-2008 time period, compared to the previous 2003-2005 time period, with 7.8% and 8.3% of households statewide, respectively.

- Rates of hunger have increased as well, from 3.0% in the 2003-2005 time period to 3.8% in the 2006-2008 time period.

- 12.3% of children <18 years of age lived in food insecure households in 2007

- There has been a 31% increase in calls to their hotline between 2008 to 2009 (37,376 to 49,107), and these calls are coming from increasingly higher income areas.

- Hunger is six times higher in low income communities, compared to the state as a wh***.

Given that recession-induced unemployment is high, Project Bread anticipates that numbers from 2010 will "dwarf" 2009's data.

So, relatively speaking, is this as bad as the situation in, say, sub-Saharan Africa? Of course not. But this is where I grew up - I don't have data on hunger in Massachusetts in the 1990s and early 2000s, but I'm sure it didn't suddenly spring forth out of nowhere in the past year or two.

I dug a bit deeper and found Rachel's Table (http://www.rachelstable.org/index.html), and organization based in Worcester, MA that works on feeding the hungry in the Worcester area, where I live. One more, then I'm done with data for now - 1/3 of children in low income areas of Worcester are hungry or at-risk of being hungry each month. This organization has specific programs for summers and school vacations. There are children for whom the school-provided lunch is their only good meal of the day, so when school is out, the children are at higher risks of hunger. "Last" (I'm not sure when this part of the web site was written) summer, this organization delivered over 70,000 meals to hungry children.

Hunger in Massachusetts will probably only get worse as time goes on, given the recession and long term concerns about food security in general, but it will likely remain hidden.