I’ve been reading a lot of comments on social media on an article that’s circulating about a school food pantry.
“How wonderful!”
“Thank God for good people!”
“Our school does this, too.”
These articles aggravate me, to be honest. Don’t get it twisted; I am also so appreciative of the fact that people feed hungry kids, but I’m also tired of the band aid approach to hunger.
We can open pantry after pantry, but that’s not going to solve the problem of hunger and food insecurity. What we need to do is recruit those whose mission it is to feed the hungry and get them involved in pushing for policy change. We need to start breaking down the systems that create or perpetuate hunger.
I was told a story by a food pantry worker in a rural West Virginia county. She brought her elderly neighbor’s food box to her every week. One evening, her neighbor fell, and, with no family to help, the pantry worker went with her to the hospital. It took a while, but finally a nurse came out and told her she could see her neighbor. On the way to the room, the nurse told her that her neighbor had died and been revived. Relieved that her neighbor was cared for, she breathed a sigh of relief and entered her room.
Her neighbor was glad to see her. She said, “I don’t think I’m going to make it home tonight. Do you think you could drop my food box off tomorrow and set it on the table?”
Let that sink in. She had just died on the table and, when brought back to life, her first thought was about missing the food pantry distribution.
People are hungry. Food pantries are already overwhelmed, and yet the government continues to cut food assistance. When a SNAP recipient gets a higher paying job, more hours, or a raise, SNAP is the first benefit to go. And here we are, applauding schools for opening food pantries. Doesn’t it seem counterproductive?
When we take food assistance from parents, kids are going to suffer. I wonder if the schools with the pantries throw away leftovers after lunch. Has anyone thought about that? How many of these kids leave the cafeteria hungry following lunch because they’re not allowed seconds and have to watch food being thrown away?
What are we teaching the kids by giving them food without a side of knowledge about how the policies in place trap people into hunger? What if we all learned what hunger looks like and why so many people are so hungry?
Let’s rip off the band aids.
