Boone County creates Food Security plan to fight hunger

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The Boone County Health Department, along with many other local organizations are working to fight hunger in the community.

Hunger doesn’t discriminate you can be young or old. Now, hunger is making its impact on Boone County.

“Many families are struggling to make ends meet and both parents are working full time jobs,” Boone County Health Department Public Health Administrator, Amanda Mehl said.

This increase in hunger is causing a large number of children and families in the community to go without food. In Boone County, over 22 percent of children are suffering from food insecurity, which means they don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

Meanwhile, 31 percent of families in Boone County are relying on snap benefits, otherwise known as food stamps.

“These issues that we are dealing with, didn’t happen over night. They’ve fostered, they’ve festered and they’ve exploded now to these staggering statistics,” Empower Boone President of the Board, Eric Miller said.

Which is why the Boone County Hunger Coalition, which is made up of local community organizations and non-profits is moving forward with it’s very own food security plan to reduce the number of hungry neighbors in the community.

“People with different backgrounds are going to be able to help us to address the issue in a more systematic way because we know that our system as a whole is failing if we have families that have these kinds of needs,” Mehl said.

The four goals of the coalition have been broken down into coordination, community outreach, education and accessibility. The group is hoping more awareness will bring in legislators and cash flow to be able to expand the services of its current facilities.

“That’s one of our biggest issues at Empower Boone is accessibility. Being up in Capron we have no transportation that is available to us,” Miller said.

However, the coalition says it’s confident this action plan will bring more awareness to the hunger issue allowing it to provide more access to fresh produce and food to those in need.

“Our job is to help our neighbors and our job is to make sure that they have what they need so that they can sustain and have a healthy life for themselves,” University of Illinois Extension Program Coordinator, Judy Hodge said.

The Boone County coalition will be working full force on its new food security action plan over the next three to five years in order to fight hunger.

Above is from:  https://wrex.com/category/2018/10/05/boone-county-creates-food-security-plan-to-fight-hunger/