Theme: Food
Issues!
There are lots of issues related to food in poverty. Some of these issues include obesity, malnourishment, transportation and childhood hunger.
When you have a limited amount of money to spend on food you can only buy what is cheap. Unfortunately what is cheap is usually also bad for you. For example eating at McDonald's is much cheaper than eating at Whole Foods, where the food is all healthy and organic. This can also lead to malnourishment, which is when you are not getting the essential nutrients to survive. One of the reasons this happens is because people in lower income areas do not have a form of transportation to get to a grocery store. The worst of these, however, is childhood hunger. It can cause children to be distracted and not do well in school, making them flunk out so they're not able to get out of poverty themselves.
St. Stephens help these issues in many ways. One of the ways is during our biggest football rivalry, St Andrew’s we collect food and donate it. We also in our advisories we collect hard boiled eggs and donate them. We also do things in our community. During the Christmas season we collect presents and give them to people in our community like the cleaning staff. IN the upper school we also do things like take service trips to places like Haiti.
Orginazations!
Organizations that are helping people in poverty in Austin:
In the city of Austin there are many organizations that help people get food when they are in poverty. One of these Organizations is Capital Area Food Bank. This is one of the largest food banks in the country. They serve the poor in Austin. They have more services than just a food bank - things like nutrition education and social services.
Children are most affected by lack of food and food insecurity. The Capital Area Food Bank also has lots of programs for children. One of these programs is the Kids' Cafe. This provides a safe place for kids to go after school and get a hot dinner and help with their homework.
Capital Area Food Bank does many helpful things for kids, their parents, and the entire community.
Mobile Loaves and Fishes has trucks that bring food to people that need it. Mobile Loaves and Fishes has served 2,783,035 (and counting) meals to the homeless, who do not have transportation. 16,278 (and counting) volunteers have helped at Mobile Loaves and Fishes. 1 in 6 Texans cannot afford food, so Mobile Loaves and Fishes brings free, healthy, fresh food to Austinites everywhere.
El Buen Samaritano!
El Buen Samaritano started in 1987 and provided health care, education, social services, health education, and emergency food for working poor Hispanic families. They are trying to transform lives by engaging the strengths of working poor Hispanic families to promote their successful participation in society.
The early years of El Buen Samaritano consisted of a soup kitchen, clothing, food, and literary classes. The first week they opened they gave away 3 meals. The next week they gave away 42 meals.
Austin has many organizations to combat the rising need for volunteers to help out homeless people. The past two days, while we helped out a lot we barely scratched the surface of the great Austin homeless organizations.
The first day we went El Buen Samaritano which does a "Breakfast with Santa" every year on Christmas Day. We helped wrap presents and put them in bags for the families. The second day we went to Mobile Loaves and Fishes, where we packed desserts for people to receive that night.
All these places really showed how willing people are to help the homeless, and that even doing something small, like starting a fundraiser or just helping out at a homeless organization, will help a lot in the eyes of the receiver.
The DAYS!
During the course of this D-term the food group has gone to two different organizations, these organizations were El Buen Samaritanio and Mobil Loaves and Fishes.
DAY 1!
The first day we went to El Buen Samaritano. This organization has many services that help the less fortunate in Austin, especially the ones who speak Spanish. We helped them prepare for an event called “Breakfast with Santa.” First off, we had to clear space for the families to come pick up the almost 750 gifts that were being collected. Then we helped wrap the gifts. After all the gifts were wrapped we had to organize them. As one could imagine, trying to get 750 gifts out the door in some kind of controlled way is no easy process. The way we helped do this was by putting all the gifts for one family in a bag and tying them up with a card that had a number on it corresponding to each family.
Austin has many organizations to combat the rising need for volunteers to help out homeless people. The past two days, while we helped out a lot, we barely scratched the surface of the great Austin homeless organizations.
The first day we went El Buen Samaritano which does a breakfast with Santa every year on Christmas day. We helped wrap presents and put them in bags for the families. The second day we went to mobile loaves and fishes where we packed desserts for people to receive that night.
All these places really showed how willing people are to help the homeless. And also that even doing something small like starting a fundraiser or just helping out at a homeless organization will help a lot in the eyes of the receiver.
Day 2!
The next day we went to Mobile Loaves and Fishes. What this organization does is takes ready-made meals out to the street, to the homeless who do not have transportation to get to a source of food. We helped them by putting all the desserts that people had donated in individual serving-size bags. Next, we did the same thing with Girl Scout cookies. We were doing this so the food could go out on the trucks to the homeless.
Cool FACTS!
-"41,000 children under the age of 18 have food insecurity daily. 43% of people and
families below the poverty line in Austin have trouble providing enough food." -Natalie
Ray
-"Mobile loaves and fishes, this non-profit has been in progress since 1998 (in fact, it
was even started in Austin) and has served over 2,700,000 meals with about 16,284
volunteers" -Sarah Silberman
-"For a family of four the poverty amount is $22,050 per year to support them with all of their needs. In many places, a family may need to pay 50,000 dollars per year to afford just basic needs. 46.2 million Americans, or 15.1 percent, live in poverty." -Garret Gill
-"At McDonalds you can get a 20 piece chicken for 5 dollars compared to a healthy meal
being 8 or 9 dollars. And with having that everyday for a year it is 1,825 dollars compared to
3,285 dollars. That is a 1,450 dollar difference." -Garret Gill
Essays!
Zane Hassuon...
Food
1. The Capital Area food bank helps hungry Central Texans by giving them food and groceries to more than 355 organizations in 21 counties. Also the food bank provides programs for partners and people who are in need free of charge. They have children’s programs, direct food distribution, education, government programs, nutrition, partner agency programs, rural programs, and senior programs. They also help the organizations of CAFB food pantry, central Texas food rescue, HOPE, fresh food for families, kids café, regional food delivery, SNAP, summer service program, Teacher Garden, Second chance Texas, Travis County SMART program, Wheels of sharing mobile food program.
2. Sustainable Food Center is a center that helps citizens in Austin get food that is healthy and edible or up to date. The SFC has a group of volunteers that are called foodies. Foodies are people who are engaged in the community and help the SFC using talent, time, and their resources. They do a lot of fundraising in the community and the SFC couldn’t be around if they weren’t helping them with all of their services.
3. North Texas food bank is a food bank that is there and tries to set op citizens who are in need of food with that. They also partner to help these 14 agencies, Agency University, charitable produce center, commodities supplemental food program, Community Kitchen, Food for Families, Food for kids, Food stamps outreach, Hunger link prepared foods, Kids café , Main program, Mobile pantry, nutrition education, Cooking Matters, Summer Food Service Program, Texas Second Chance.
4. The Gluten Intolerance Group also known as the gig is a nonprofit organization that runs on donations like the combined federal Campaign, United way Designated giving and more. The money from these memberships funds this system. The [programs that this organization help is the GIG newsmagazine, Educational Materials, GIG kids camps, Educational Meetings, Advocacy Involvement, and Actively working towards a unified voice for all persons with gluten intolerance.
5. The Food Bank of west central Texas is an organization that helps over 13 counties with over 50,000 homeless people living in poverty today. The FBWCT distributes emergency food through 150 partner agencies in 13 counties of West Central Texas (Fisher, Jones, Shackelford, Stephens, Mitchell, Nolan, Taylor, Callahan, Eastland, Runnels, Coleman, Brown, and Comanche).Their partner agencies include church pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, after school programs serving disadvantaged children, daycare centers, senior citizen centers, and rehabilitation facilities. They also end the search for seeking food or medical care but they can only have one this bank gives them food so they can have both.
Sarah Silberman...
In today’s high paying society, especially in the food industry, those living in poverty are most of the time greatly affected by this expense. Depending on the career of these people, they can either be helped or oppressed by the increase in food prices. However, there are a very few who will be affected in a good way because of this. When families in poverty try and buy food, they most likely go for the cheaper items, but when the cost of the cheapest items increase, it is much harder for them to have enough food for a balanced diet (i.e. having breakfast, lunch, and dinner). This varies from country to country, so for this paper we will focus on the US. Although 75% of the people living in such conditions do make their income from agriculture, a study from World Bank proved that the buyers of this food are more affluent than the sellers. Not only does the food price affect families in poverty in this way, but also in the nutritional sense.
As stated earlier, it’s most likely that people without much expendable income will try and buy the cheapest food possible so they can pay for other necessities. Sadly, the food that costs the least amount of money is more often than not very bad for you. McDonalds and Burger Kings generally have low prices, but are horrendous for one’s health. If this is all a family in poverty can afford for years and years, than the children of that family will become unhealthy and overweight, not to mention their parents, and this can even affect their learning. When parents and children are exposed to all this unhealthy food for such and elongated period of time, this can do damages in the mental and physical ways. Same as earlier, learning for the children, but for the parents it can be more than that in a sense. When parents try and conserve money in any way possible, they too will eat this food. And when non-nutritional food is consumed by parents for years and years, than eventually they may have a health re
lated issue (i.e. heart attack, clogged arteries, etc.) which can take them away from their work for any given amount of time. If this is the case, the person making the money will no longer be doing that, which can cause the family to fall into poverty even more than it already has.
Sadly, obesity isn’t the only health issue that can affect people in poverty. Another huge problem is starvation. Everyday someone dies from starvation because they can’t afford food. Whether it’s the homeless man on the corner begging for money, or the single mother trying to take care of three kids, these people are trying to make ends meet and food can sometimes be the last thing on their list. Although the time period is different for people to starve, during the entire process it is extremely painful. This would be considered one of the largest problems having to do with food and poverty. The food banks can help people and charities too, but sometimes it’s hard for a person to make it all the way there and when they are there, a form might have to be filled out then considered by a committee, and by that time it may be too late. Another problem in this system is education affected by the little to no food that some children in poverty consume.