It is a common misconception that hunger is more of a global than a local issue, but roughly 100,000 people in Connecticut suffer from food insecurity. Of these 100,000 people, 40,000 are children.
Tuesday night ConnPIRG (Public Interest Research Group) held a Hunger 101 workshop in the Student Union to raise hunger awareness. The leaders of the workshop were employees from Foodshare, a regional food bank that distributes to Hartford and Tolland Counties. Foodshare distributes 11 tons of food to 40 locations (including daycares, food pantries and soup kitchens) on a daily basis. Foodshare operates with the assistance of about 1,800 volunteers.
The Hunger 101 workshop is presented locally to different schools and universities, faith communities and companies. There are several different versions of the workshop, each altered to cater to their respective audience. Hunger 101's aim is to find a way to explain to middle class citizens how people fall into poverty and into situations with low food security.
"Hunger is more prevalent in Connecticut than students think or want to think and it's really important to understand how big of a problem it really is," said Josh Shulman, a 2nd-semester political science major. Shulman is an intern for ConnPIRG and was responsible for arranging the Hunger 101 workshop. "It [hunger] is not something that has to continue."
The workshop included an eight-minute video, presented by Shoprite, entitled "Hunger Next Door." The video interviewed various impoverished families who have fallen on hard times. Fires, unemployment and unpaid child support were among reasons for the documented families' poverty. Although the families endured hardship, they remained surprisingly optimistic about the future. One man who was struggling to feed his family explained that "there's always tomorrow." According to the video, the USDA estimates that in the United States, 10.5 million adults and 12 million children suffer from food insecurity.
The workshop gave students an opportunity to experience what it is like for someone struggling with food insecurity. Participants were given a refrigerator card that included a description of a new identity and a budget to work with in order to buy food for their new fictional family.
There were four stations that participants could visit, in an attempt to secure their family's dinner for that night. The stations included a small grocery store, with limited merchandise, a food pantry that was operated by a disgruntled worker, an opportunity to apply for emergency money, which proved to be impossible because the forms were in Spanish, and human services, which were not very inclined to hand out food stamps. Some participants had restrictions such as not owning an oven or not being documented, which created further challenges in securing food. Needless to say, the struggle to obtain food, much like the struggle that many in the local area experience, was frustrating and difficult.
"I think that [the Hunger 101 workshop] is a really good program and showed how frustrating it is for people who get by on almost nothing," Megan Corning, a 2nd-semester psychology major and member of ConnPIRG said. "It definitely did a good job showing how [hunger] is a big problem in our community. We think of hunger as something not local."
ConnPIRG is participating in the 23rd annual Hunger Clean Up on April 14, which is a day of volunteering at local hunger and homelessness relief agencies and fund-raising in an attempt to alleviate and end local hunger. The Hunger Clean Up also makes an effort to raise awareness in the community.
"One thing that I've learned is students who talk a risk and get involved now will be more likely to get involved later," Sarah Santora, the volunteer services representative for Foodshare said. "This generation will be a bigger resource, because [community] service is often required for service clubs, faith communities and it really helps."
