Recap: No Kid Hungry North Carolina Launch with Gov. Bev Perdue
Posted by Ariane Holm on Tuesday, September 13, 2011
North Carolina is ranked 11th among all states for child food insecurity, but today we took a major step towards changing that by launching the No Kid Hungry North Carolina partnership. Gov. Bev Perdue, Durham Mayor Bill Bell and Share Our Strength’s chairman and CEO Bill Shore were on hand along with NC Serves, the lead nonprofit working with the North Carolina Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, to kickoff the partnership today at Lakewood Elementary School.
North Carolina has federal food and nutrition programs in place that provide a valuable safety net for families and children facing hunger. The problem is many of these families and kids lack access to these programs. For example, school breakfast is available in 99 percent of all North Carolina schools, and the Governor recently signed a bill allowing low-income kids who qualify for reduced-price lunch to get free breakfast. Yet, for reasons ranging from transportation issues to morning schedule conflicts, of the more than 640,000 students who get a free or reduced-price lunch at school, fewer than half (310,516) participate in school breakfast.
Led by Gov. Perdue, the No Kid Hungry North Carolina partnership will bring together key government agencies, nonprofit organizations and other stakeholders to form a collaborating table that works towards ending childhood hunger in the state. The partnership’s focus during its first year is to connect more eligible low-income children to school breakfast and summer meals. As a first step, No Kid Hungry North Carolina is working to close the school breakfast gap by launching a pilot program with 27 schools across the state using a variety of strategies for increasing school breakfast participation which have worked successfully in other states.
The launch event featured Smurf characters from the movie “The Smurfs” who kept more than 150 2nd and 3rd graders entertained while stressing the importance of eating nutritious foods. The Freedom Schoolers, a group of 2nd and 3rd graders from Lakewood Elementary, also sang to the audience, showing their school pride. Share Our Strength’s North Carolina Cooking Matters™ team and lead partner Inter-Faith Food Shuttle also handed out treats and information about their program.
The message of all the speakers simple one — too many kids in North Carolina are hungry. By each of us providing our own unique strength to this cause we can end childhood hunger in this state.
To find out more about the No Kid Hungry North Carolina, you can go to www.NoKidHungry.org/NorthCarolina.
September 13, 2011 | 2 comment(s) | Tags: no kid hungry, north carolina
Comments
2 reader comments so far.
Why is it you are more concerned with getting kids signed up for a govt program than you are that they are actually eating? Maybe some of those 300,000+ kids are EATING AT HOME. But that counts as a 'fail' to you, right? Because the real goal is signing them up for th govt program and boosting your rolls. nice.
Posted by Something Wrong Here on September 20, 2011
Thank you for your comment. According to the USDA, there are more than 603,000 kids at risk of hunger in NC which means that many of these kids are actually not eating breakfast/other meals at home. The reality is that children who suffer from hunger are sick more often and struggle to focus in school, impacting their overall academic and physical well being well into adulthood. But child hunger is not only an educational issue or a health issue, it’s a moral issue. It is the role of government agencies that administer food and nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals to do everything they can to make sure that our most vulnerable children are getting connected to regular, nutritious meals. This campaign focuses on making government work better for our kids, the voiceless victims in childhood hunger.
Posted by Clay Dunn on September 21, 2011
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