It looked like a celebration in north Athens Wednesday afternoon and it was. There were all the trimmings, including games, face painting, bounce houses, music and food. The mayor, a judge and a constable all turned out.
But the party at Lil Angels Giving Back to the Community on North Prairieville Street had a very serious goal: Eliminating hunger in Athens children.
The event was a kickoff to the Summer Food Program being conducted in the city by Baylor University’s Texas Hunger Initiative (THI).
“I wanted the community to know that there are facilities here that are open to the community, that are serving meals,” said THI Child Hunger Outreach Specialist Debra Marshall, who is leading the local program.
The program will run Monday through Friday until Aug. 15 and will serve free summer meals that meet federal nutrition guidelines for all kids and teens ages 18 and younger. The following locations will be serving lunch from noon to 1 p.m. and a snack from 3 to 3:30 p.m.:
- Lil Angels Giving Back to the Community, 801 North Prairieville Street
- Fairview Apartments, 160 Gibson Road
- West Hyland Apartments, 737 West College Street
“I am pleased that we have the Texas Hunger Initiative in our community to help provide free meals to children this summer,” said Mayor Jerry Don Vaught, who served the first meal. “I hope we can get the word out through our city and Henderson County that this program is available this summer.”
A HUNGER ISSUE
Child hunger is a terrible problem in Texas, particularly in the summer.
According to THI, “One in four children in Texas does not know whether or not he or she will have food for their next meal, a condition known as food insecurity.”
In the summer the problem is exacerbated, according to THI, because the more than 2.4 million Texas students who are on the free or reduced meal program while at school now have no resources to fill the gap.
According to “Map the Meal Gap” from Feeding America, 27.5 percent — almost 5,000 — of the children in Henderson County are food insecure and 75 percent are eligible for nutrition programs.
Many of those children are in Athens, according to Marshall, who said the city has a high percentage of homeless teens and kids on the free and reduced lunch program at school.
“A lot of the kids in this area do not receive a meal during the summer and so this was a prime area where a summer meals site was needed,” she said.
FEEDING THE BRAIN AS WELL
Marshall plans to do more than provide meals.
“We are also going to be doing educational activities, because I’m a firm believer in you really have to start educating our kids and the families because that is the only way you can decrease hunger and poverty,” she said.
Marshall said she has already met with many of the people in the community including business owners and church leaders and received great support.
“I emphasize to them that I am really about education. We are going to do fun games, and we’re going to do educational fun games. It is going to be fun, but it is going to be educational too,” she said. “When those kids go back to school in August, those teachers are going to see a difference in some children’s math, they are going to see a difference in some children’s reading, and those are all things they need to be successful.”
STATISTICS FROM THI
- Texas has a household food insecurity rate that is significantly higher than the national average (along with six other states). 18.4% 2010-2012
- Texas’s Child Food Insecurity Rate in 2011 was 27.6% which includes 1,849,060 children and places Texas 9th highest in child food insecurity in the nation.
- More than one in six Texans, 4.8 million people (17.9%), lives in poverty.
- More than $6 billion of private and state funds designated for hunger related programs in Texas went unused in 2010.
- In 2010, less than 73% of Texans who were eligible for SNAP participated in the program.
- Only 11% of the 2.4 million Texas children who qualify for free or reduced priced meals during the school year participate in the Summer Meals program.