How can you help many without leaving your chair and NOT opening up your checkbook? Next time you’re on the Internet, go to www.thebreastcancersite.com and look at the topics listed across the top. Choose to support any or all of these: hunger, breast cancer, animal rescue, veterans, autism, child health, literacy, and the rainforest. Pick a cause, then, when it opens, press “Click Here to Give—It’s Free!” Various sponsors give money for each click we do, supporting reputable groups which work toward helping others or our environment. You don’t give any information, so nobody will solicit funds from you or send you spam. You can continue to contribute by clicking on any or all once a day, or at least each time you sign onto the internet. Stick the site into your “Favorites,” or send yourself a weekly reminder email with the address to link you quickly to the site. How easy is that!
Tag Archive for hunger
Our Seniors are Hungry
The AARP reported some startling statistics about our senior citizens (age 50+). Many are going hungry in the U.S. Here are their figures:
10+ million are at risk of hunger each day.
3 million use food banks each year.
$130.5 billion is the yearly health care cost estimate resulting from food insecurity.
Why aren’t we taking better care of our older citizens?
We’re Getting Hungrier
Droughts, floods, conflicts, and economic slowdowns: they, according to a U.N. report, are the major causes of people going hungry. They all adversely affect food production. The result is that an increasing number of human beings on our Earth are going hungry. In fact, the report says, the number of malnourished people worldwide has increased from 815 million in 2015 to 821 million in 2017, and the numbers keep rising.
What can we do? Take better care of our planet so there are fewer and less intense floods and droughts, work through groups and pressure our lawmakers to work toward peace, and help each other rebound from financial crises.
And, it goes without saying, feed the hungry, at home and abroad.
Let People SNAP Back
As America struggles to pull itself out of a devastating economic slump, 48 million of us have just had their chances of survival pushed even farther down. The average food-stamp cut of $36 a month (for a family of four) doesn’t seem like much to some of us. But how many of us could adequately feed our family on $632 a month? (If you think you spend less, save your receipts for a month and add them up.)
SNAP—the largest anti-hunger program in our country—affects many people. Those receiving food stamps can provide food for themselves and their families, nourishment that helps children learn in school, parents to keep up strength for jobs, and bodies to remain healthier. These people also shop at dollar stores, discount grocery stores, and the like; spending less hits those businesses hard. Other businesses are hurt, as well, because food comes first and “extras” like clothing and household goods come second.
SNAP was raised in 2009 to help meet the needs of vulnerable Americans who lost their jobs and were otherwise caught in the terrible recession. That was the humane action to take. Yes, the recession is over, but our recovery is not. If we are to recover fully we should not reduce SNAP. We need to give all of our citizens a chance to fight their way from the economic edge. Now is NOT the time to pull the rug out from under their feet. Besides, feeding the poor is the moral thing to do.
250,000 Hungry People on Our Doorstep
Hunger and food insecurity (not sure where the next meal will come from) is not a problem found “somewhere else.” It’s right here, on our doorstep, among people we come in contact with every day. Some 250,000 people in Silicon Valley use the Food Bank each month. The total of hungry people around us is even higher, because many others depend on food pantries that operate out of churches or other groups that collect their own food for distribution, not dipping into the never-enough supply at the Food Bank.
That’s a large number of men, women, and children suffering in an economy struggling to stabilize itself. I can’t change the situation or hurry along economic recovery, but I can toss a few extra items into my grocery cart and drop them off someplace that will do some good, like the Santa Teresa Parish food pantry down the street from me on Cahalan Ave. I bet there’s a close-by place where you could do the same.