
There is still time to participate in the United Way of King County’s Hunger Action Week. Here is more information from them so you can be part of this. I will be all about this next week so come back and check it out.
Hunger Action Week Overview
Why focus on hunger?
United Way of King County has always been dedicated to making sure families and individuals have enough to eat. However, within the last two years, the landscape of hunger has changed dramatically. The recession has led to more people needing help getting enough to eat. And people who were already relying on food stamps and food banks were put in even more precarious situations.
Statistics that have been coming out have reflected the dire state of hunger in our local community and throughout the US:
- In King County, there has been a 17% increase in food bank visits between Q3 2008 and Q3 2009 (those are our latest numbers). That an increase of over 31,000 people who had to use food banks for food. (Source)
- A December 20th article in the Seattle Times reported the following:
“In the past two years… the number of people in Washington state receiving food stamps has soared by nearly 60 percent, about twice the national increase…. In October, a record 12.8 percent of the state’s population — about 855,000 people — were on food stamps”. (Source)
While we think Basic Food (Washington’s name for food stamps) is a great program to combat hunger, it devastating to see how many people need to rely on it.
- A 2009 USDA report showed that 47 million Americans are “food insecure” – that’s the most ever. That means that about 1 in every 7 Americans don’t have enough to eat. (Source)
What do we hope to accomplish with HAW?
The purpose of Hunger Action Week is to raise awareness around hunger. Most people don’t realize how many people are struggling. For most of us, it’s so easy to forget that many in America don’t know where their next meal will come from. Or that many have to choose between having enough food to eat and paying for rent.
We want to get people thinking about, talking about, and taking around hunger.
For us at United Way, one our biggest metrics of success is how many people sign up for the Hunger Challenge. The reason being, simply, that by signing up, people write their names and emails so we can actually measure how many people we’ve reached. Further, we will be sending emails during Hunger Action Week letting people know how to get involved.
We want people to sign up for the Hunger Challenge even if they see it as a daunting task because failure speaks a lot to the challenge. Personally, I couldn’t get through the week that opened my eyes to how difficult living solely on Basic Food would be.
What does United Way of King County do around hunger issues?
When most people hear “United Way”, they know we’re a charitable organization but they don’t know what we actually do. Big campaigns like this help us clarify our role in the community.
So what do we do? Basically, we raise funds and make strategic investments in order to bring significant change in the community. Instead of looking at individual nonprofits, we look at the whole community and figure out how best use the money we raise.
For us, hunger is a big issue and we have put our money where our mouth is. Every year, we invest nearly about $1million into 15 food organizations. Due to the recession, we raised even more money for food programs through our Response for Basic Needs. Last year, we gave $1.7million to 45 different food programs in King County.
Along with that, we created a volunteer program called Bridge to Basics where volunteers go out in the community to help people sign up for benefits such as food stamps, utility assistance, and low-cost health care.
We are trying to cover all the bases and make sure nobody in King County has to go hungry.
Hunger Challenge
What we want from you in terms of the Hunger Challenge.
We are asking you to take the hunger challenge, post regularly throughout the week, and post a reflection of HAW at the end of the week.
Also, we would like it if you encouraged your readers to take part in the Hunger Challenge and other ways in order to make a difference around hunger.
Of course, all of that is very flexible. You can take the challenge and write about it however you like.
What are the rules?
First, I’d like to emphasize that the rules are made to be guidelines. The point is to get people thinking about the challenge of hunger in everyday life, not necessarily to mimic hunger. Please feel free to use these rules but also feel free to modify them as you think is best
Individuals can spend $7 a day for the challenge. We chose that amount because it is the maximum food benefits a single person can get on Basic Food. And while Basic Food is designed to be a supplement to food budgets, the reality is that many rely solely on their benefits for food because they don’t have enough money to handle food as well as all the other expenses that they need to take care of.
This table shows how much allowance you’re allowed depending on family size:
| Household Size |
Hunger Challenge Budget (for 5 days) |
| 1 |
$33.00 |
| 2 |
$61.00 |
| 3 |
$88.00 |
| 4 |
$111.00 |
| 5 |
$132.00 |
| 6 |
$158.00 |
Other Tidbits
Our Donation Project – “Yes We Can!”
While raising money is not the number one component of this campaign, it is definitely a part of it. For Hunger Action Week, we are raising money for a very cool project that I’m excited about.
The “Yes We Can!” project is a partnership with United Way of King County, the South King County Food Coalition, Northwest Harvest, and a local cannery.
We are trying to raise $10,000 so that we can rent out time at the cannery to benefit local food banks. By having access to this cannery, fresh fruit and produce that would normally be thrown away due to their short shelf-life will get canned, preserved, and sent out to area food banks! That way, nutritious produce isn’t wasted and food banks will have fuller shelves. It’s a great project that we are proud to be part of.
Links
Our Homepage: http://www.uwkc.org
Our Hunger Action Week page: http://www.uwkc.org/hunger
Our blog: http://www.uwkc.org/blog
Our Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/HomelessKC / http://www.twitter.com/VolunteerKC
Hunger Action Week Hashtag: #HungerAction
Our Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/United-Way-of-King-County/151932322263?ref=ts
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