Growing up in the shadow of the poverty line: What did my husband and I do once did, when did I give food to kids in need?
The side of the poverty line was not always occupied by Thomas. She used to give bags of food to kids in need as a social worker. In the not-so-distant past, the family lived in a three-story townhome they shared with Thomas’s grandmother.
Food was very, very tight. My husband’s health, because of his conditions, there were times we just couldn’t eat right. His health condition got a lot worse. We were using less and less diapers. It was very bad.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/02/1125571699/hunger-poverty-us-dc-food-pantry
The Washington, DC, food pantry: homeless poverty, incarceration, and the recovery of our nation’s greatest enemy, says Radha Muthiah
More than one million people struggled to put food on the table last year in the Washington, D.C. region. A third of the population live around the city of one of the richest nations on Earth.
“Coming out of the height of the pandemic with inflation being as sustained and high as it is, it’s a hard time for many families,” said Radha Muthiah, CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank. Food and food programs have a critical role to play when it comes to rebuilding our nation.
“Both my husband and I are college educated. My husband is a combat vet. And we’ve always worked since we were teenagers. I’ve worked in social services, in the human services field for over 30 years. And my husband served the military. And then when he got out, he’s worked in different jobs,” she said. “This could happen to anybody.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/02/1125571699/hunger-poverty-us-dc-food-pantry
The Capital Area Food Bank’s Curbside Groceries: Selling Meat, Fruits, and Meat in a Food Pantry
She spoke after picking up free groceries from the food pantry run by Western Fairfax Christian Ministries in Chantilly, Va. Signs on the sparse shelves indicated limits on some of the products — a pound of meat, two gallons of milk, two dozen eggs or five cans of soup per person. And she’s only allowed one visit to the pantry per month.
More than 64 million meals were distributed by her group last year, more than in any previous year. It has required a fair amount of innovation to meeting the needs of the most impoverished people. The food bank’s Curbside Groceries is a store on wheels that has at least 12 stops in food desert areas. That includes Washington’s Ward Eight, a predominantly Black area with higher poverty whose approximately 80,000 residents have very limited access to full-service grocery stores.
“When they’re working multiple jobs, as most of our clients are, and they’re having to drop off or pick up their kids from school, childcare, one or two hours to get to the grocery store is really quite a distance,” Muthiah said.
There are a number of things that are at the root of food insufficiency. And it’s important, therefore, not just to address things at the surface and some of the symptoms, but also to address these root causes.”
The Capital Area Foodbank set up a food pharmacy at the Children’s National Hospital to give doctors healthy food to give to patients.
In good times and bad, Carla Claure peels, cuts and slices the freshest produce and meat she can find for her husband and her teenage daughters Alejandra and Daniela by the dim light of her prefabricated home. I make my own tortillas with my tomatoes and some cheese. It is good food. It’s healthy food. Claure said that it was good for the families.
But fresh fruit, vegetables and meat are also some of the most expensive items at the store. And with rent costing nearly a thousand dollars a month, the food budget gets stretched thin.
They both lost their jobs at the beginning of the epidemic, and her work stopped at her husband’s construction sites because she couldn’t clean homes anymore. So they had to rely on food stamps and donated produce.
Undocumented migrants don’t have many benefits and are afraid if they try to they’ll be retaliated against. For Spanish people without documentation, you are not able to get other things. You are not able to make application for food stamps too,” Claure said. It’s hard for children because they don’t understand why we don’t have food.
Muthiah, the regional food bank chief, says households of color with children struggle the most to put food on the table, with two-thirds of those families impacted by food insecurity.
“You get very protective of the food because you can’t just go out there and get exactly what you want. And sometimes parents don’t eat, or they eat very little, so that their kids can eat,” she said. “The junk food and the processed food is so much cheaper than the healthy food. What’s wrong with that picture?”
Thomas called for having more people like her — with lived experience in poverty — to have a voice in policymaking on hunger. She met with the Housing and Urban Development Secretary last month and is already active in that space.
“I would challenge anybody who does have what’s considered a living wage to live on a sub-living wage. Thomas stated that they wouldn’t get very far. “You become creative and then you learn how to go without things, like Q-tips and other things that we take for granted become, like, prizes, right — Oh, cool, we got Q-tip money this month!”
For a family with three children with two working parents in Fairfax County, the living wage is $36.88 per hour per adult, according to an MIT database. That’s nearly five times the poverty wage and more than three times the minimum wage.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/02/1125571699/hunger-poverty-us-dc-food-pantry
The London Free School Meals Program: Six Years After Being Poverty, Thomas Has Applied Effort and What She Can’t Say
Six years after falling into poverty, Thomas still isn’t telling people she depends on aid to survive. It took a full-fledged effort that lasted two years to find the appropriate programs for her family and fill out the associated paperwork before she finally received those benefits.
In London, a quarter of all children are already eligible for the free school meals according to national criteria.
The program will save a family around 500 calories per child, and run for the academic year in September. The statement said it would help reduce the stigma associated with being low income.
The new program is expected to help around 270,000 pupils who are not currently eligible, according to estimates by researchers for the city government.
More and more people in the UK are struggling to afford food and electricity because of inflation which is near its highest level in at least four decades.
A survey of 85 food banks by the Independent Food Aid Network, an advocacy group, found that 89% saw demand increase in December and January, compared with the same period 12 months ago.
An increase in the number of people wanting assistance for the first time and an increase in the number of people needing ongoing support are some of the reasons cited by food banks. A third of the organizations have served staff working for the National Health Service which has been hit with strikes since December.
At The Easter Team, a food bank in London, there are working people on low incomes who can’t make ends meet.
Parrish added that the food bank had provided a “record” number of Christmas parcels and modified their usual contents as “clients told us they wouldn’t be able to afford to put ovens on, even on Christmas Day.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/20/economy/london-free-school-meals/index.html
The winter weather in the UK: What are UK adults worried about in their homes? A survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
A survey of more than 2,700 UK adults, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Monday, found that 51% were worried about keeping warm in their homes this winter.
Some 60% of respondents, who were polled between January 25 and February 5, said they were using less gas or electricity at home to cope with the increased cost of food, fuel and energy bills.
People living in cold flats have horror stories about not being able to keep their fridge going because they don’t have an energy budget.
A ONS survey of almost 17,000 UK adults found that 34% of people in their twenties and thirties reported borrowing more money or using more credit than usual.