Posted on 05/30/2017 12:21:49 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Summertime,
and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’
and the cotton is high
Oh your daddy’s rich
and your ma is good-lookin’
So hush, little baby,
don’t you cry.
— Lyrics to “Summertime,” sung by Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald knew a lot about the haves and have-nots. She grew up poor and at 17 had been homeless and hungry for a year before she was “discovered” at The Apollo in Harlem in 1934.
Think of the millions of hungry children in rich America today who might never be “discovered” or are kept from realizing their talents. And for them summertime is very hard with bouts of hunger.
On the last day of school they’ll leave behind more than teachers and friends. They lose access to the school breakfasts, lunches, and after-school snacks that help keep them healthy and ready to learn during the school year. For many children these are their best or only meals of the day.
The 100 percent federally funded Summer Food Service Program will once again this year be a food lifeline for millions of low-income hungry children during the long hot summer. Right now many community sponsors, including school districts, local government agencies, camps and private nonprofit organizations are working through their state agencies to be ready to serve healthy meals to millions of children this summer.
The Summer Food Service Program tries to meet the need and helps to deliver the dollars to pay for the basic nutrition every child needs every day. For communities that use it, the benefits are enormous. It not only feeds children but provides much needed summer jobs for youth and adults often in communities where jobs are scarce — including cafeteria workers, bus drivers and many others who enable children to stave off summer hunger.
The tragedy is too few of the children who receive school breakfasts or lunches get free meals in the summer. Many more go hungry. The Food Research & Action Center notes more than 20 million children received free or reduced-price school lunch during the 2014-2015 school year, but only 3.2 million of them — 1 in 6 — received meals during summer 2015.
No state comes close to reaching all its hungry children during the summer. In 2015 only nine states and the District of Columbia served summer meals to more than 20 percent of children who participated in free or reduced-priced lunch programs during the school year. Eleven states served summer meals to fewer than 1 in 10 of their low-income children.
But some good news is that state efforts are slowly growing: 29 states did better in summer 2015 than in summer 2014.
States and localities can and must do far more to stop summer hunger. It’s unconscionable that states and communities are leaving millions of dollars on the table that could be used to feed hungry children right now and create jobs supporting summer feeding programs in communities that desperately need them. No communities should be allowed to ignore these funds.
As Coretta Scott King once said: “I must remind you that starving a child is violence.”
The first step, of course, is to make sure federal, state and local summer nutrition programs remain a budget priority and do not lose ground or go backwards. When more than one million households with children have no income but benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps as I still call it), and there is talk of threats to even that critical piece of the safety net, every eligible community must find a way to ensure their children are fed.
Find out where the summer feeding sites are in your community. Check with other organizations in your community that provide summer activities for children to help them find ways to add meals. They may need a little help from local foundations or community donations to cover extra expenses like refrigerators or coolers. Smaller programs may be able to link to other food programs in their community to get meals to feed the children in their care.
If transportation to summer feeding sites is a problem for children, as it is in a number of states, mobile food vans may be an option with help from local bus or other transportation services.
Summer feeding programs could become the hub for other child-focused activities. Adding programs and services and keeping sites open longer could not only reduce summer hunger but help communities create some desperately-needed jobs and implement greatly needed quality out-of-school-time programs — a win-win.
Other communities are testing electronic benefit transfer cards to help families purchase extra food for children during the summer. We should be using the Summer Food Service Program as effectively as possible with the achievable goal of ending summer child hunger in every community.
There’s still time to do your part. The Children’s Defense Fund is proud that all of our CDF Freedom Schools sites will be serving meals this summer, some with Summer Food Service Program partnerships.
There is still time to start a site or to link other programs to existing sites. The USDA’s Summer Food Service Program’s website is a helpful resource and offers tips: In order for a site to exist in your community, a school, nonprofit organization or local government agency must be the program sponsor and be responsible for the administration of the program.
To begin mobilizing your community, contact the following people or groups, and tell them you want to help feed hungry children in the community this summer. Contact:
• The school principal
• Teachers
• The Parent Teachers Association
• The school food service manager
• School officials such as the school board or superintendent of schools
• The Mayor’s office
• Recreation and Parks Office County officials
• Elected officials.
As the USDA says: Volunteer! Our best Summer Food Service Program sites have organized, well-run activities that keep the interest of the children and teens coming back to the site day after day. Some of these activities include arts and crafts, tutoring, mentoring, drama, sports, computer training, music, gardening, reading programs, cooking or any other creative ideas you may have.
Many sites have enlisted local fire and police departments, local celebrities, local businesses and local political figures to make presentations to their SFSP sites.
The only limitation is your imagination. Please do your part to make this summer a time when living is easier for children by helping stamp out hunger.
***********
Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
A dozen eggs cost about a buck. 3#’s of apples cost $2-4. A loaf odf bread is still under $2 at the grocery store and store brand bologna is under $2 a #.
For less than $10 a child can be fed by their parents a healthy breakfast and lunch every day.
IF parents won’t FEED their Kids, the kids need to be TAKEB AWAY FROM THEM and GIVEN TO PEOPLE WHO WILL!!!<P,WHAT kind of LOUSY parent doesn’t feed their kids????
Lack of responsibility and bad parenting is one of the main causes. These parents have allowed big government to usurp their personal responsibilities to feed, clothe and shelter their children. And public education has become no more than free daycare and a detachment for parents from the responsibility of educating their children.
They do not inspire their children to be successful. Instead they set poor examples by allowing themselves to be chained like slaves to the government plantation. They do not comprehend or are unaware of the debt this nation has incurred because of the welfare state. That debt continues forward to their children and future generations. And so they have robbed those generations of the very prosperity they themselves seek. All for the sake of their selfish needs. And so the cycle repeats itself until broken. Children watch, emulate, and many follow in the footsteps of their parents, No wonder the great war on poverty continues to be passed among generations.
In order to break the cycle they must learn to take personal responsibility, make the right choices for their families, and better communicate with their children. They must set the example and lay down the rules to their children. Finally they must be prepared to give of themselves for the sake of their children. Yes, this will take hard work.
If truly needy and unable to work there are many friends of different religions and private sector charities to sustain them if they will seek them. They may discover no matter how bad their circumstances, there are others who are worse off than them. But someday, GOD willing, they might find themselves in the role of giving, not taking.
Imprisoning children by forcing them to live with adults who do not care enough for them to feed them.
Government funded child abuse.
$127 average, per person, is just that.
It's the average, per all the people fed.
A mother with 5 kids is 6 people.
Otherwise, it would be average per claim or household.
The average per household is $255
These people are bred as livestock to keep the Poverty Industrial Complex humming - and devouring our tax dollars while doing so.
The divide between people paying taxes and those breeding is growing; I do both, but see these two groups increasingly becoming mutually exclusive. In my state of NJ many of the former are pushing back against the expenses of the latter - and leaving the state when the price is too high.
Thank you for clarifying. You have been a conservative longer than I, so tell me.......why do states dole out what almost seem to be incentives for young single women to keep having babies?
At my school they play the system like a violin virtuous. And the kids pay the price as does society. I have a friend who goes to homes and works with babies. She tells me about babies propped up in high chairs in front of a blaring tv. She is often the only play & talking they get.
I don’t know what the answer is.
Long time no see! (I still haven’t made your cream puffs yet, but it’s on my bucket list for the summer ; )
When I first started working in a public school I was still a pretty big liberal. A good friend told me all the freebies made people lazy & they come to expect more & more. I disagreed w/ her until I saw it in action. I see it in person over generations. Now I’m seeing great grandparents being the care givers. There is a “man” in town who has had 28+ kids go thru the primary school. He is not done.
Something must be done. Good to see you!
Yes, the kids pay the price, and, as another poster has noted, that constitutes neglect. If you are receiving welfare and still claim you can’t feed your children, then you’re squandering the money and deserve to have the kids taken away.
And if you’re already getting food stamps and every other taxpayer subsidy, you sure as heck don’t need us feeding your kids every meal.
And then there’s the work requirement ... and a cap on benefits ...
Considering that there is ONE FULL-TIME GOVT. EMPLOYEE for EACH FAMILY ON WELFARE, why doesn’t the government employee spend their day babysitting what they do all day?
The problem is that the layabouts probably outnumber the working beneficiaries.
LOL!!! I can’t believe you remembered the cream puffs!!! I’ll give you a delicious dip/spread recipe if you are interested.
28 KIDS???? Seriously?? Are you in UTAH or DETROIT?
Mississippi & yes I would love your recipe. Thanks!
I got a mans recipe and a woman’s.....which do you want? one has blue cheese and one has apricots and craisins.
Oh blue cheese, I could eat blue cheese everyday!
OK...here goes:
1 8 oz. block of Phila. Cream Cheese
4 oz. crumbled blue cheese
garlic powder to taste....I use about 1/2 teaspoon
about a half shot of JACK DANIELS to soften.....
Mix with fork to smash up blue cheeses and Cream cheese
Serve with Pretzels....it’s best with pretzels, we think!!
Enjoy!!
The other dip is:
1 8 oz. block of cream cheese
LOTS of dried apricots, diced
Lots of Craisins, diced
1/2 teaspoon sugar
some CREAM SHERRY to loosen up everything and make it mixable.
Serve with a “sweetish” cracker like Wheat thins
Enjoy!
Exactly! Parents that are not feeding their children- that is neglect and abuse. Caring parents will do whatever they can to feed their children and will not sell food stamps. Homes with hungry children need to be investigated.
Thank you! I am going to sub bourbon for the Jack Daniels. Sounds delish, thanks!
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