• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Real Mom Nutrition

A no-judgments zone about feeding a family.

  • About
    • Start Here
    • Work With Me
    • Press
    • Disclosure & Policies
    • Contact
  • New Posts
  • Recipes
    • Most Popular Recipes
    • Breakfast
    • Dinner
    • Snacks
    • Desserts
    • Drinks
  • Feeding Kids
    • Picky Eating
    • Packing Lunches
    • Nutrition Ideas + Advice
    • School Wellness
    • Snacks In Sports
    • Meal Planning + Food Shopping
  • Freebies
    • Free Picky Eating E-Course
    • Free Lunch Packing E-Course

June 1, 2017

8 Things You Can Do To Fight Hunger In Your Community

  • Share
  • Tweet

Food insecurity is a very real problem in our country. Want to help? Here are eight simple things you can do to help fight hunger in your community.

How to Fight Hunger In Your Community

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own first-world food problems that we forget there are people in our own communities–including children who sit alongside our kids in the classroom–who worry about simply having enough food to eat on a daily basis. I’m so happy to have Clancy Harrison, a fellow registered dietitian and a passionate advocate for food justice–guest posting today about what we can do right now!

by Clancy Harrison, MS, RDN, FAND

Hunger is a major public health concern in the United States impacting nearly 50 million people and is especially crushing to children. Before I became the president of The Al Beech West Side Food Pantry, I had many misconceptions surrounding hunger and poverty in the United States. I thought hunger and poverty was associated with people living in chronic poverty. I was wrong.

The truth is, poverty is mostly caused by a temporary situation. Many people live a paycheck away from making the hard decision between electricity, medication, and gas for food. The loss of a family member, birth of a child, reduced wages, a natural disaster, and even the break down of a car can put a family over the edge.

Serving food pantry clients for over five years, I witness the real face of hunger daily. The real face of hunger looks like all of us. In the United States, hunger is an invisible epidemic because it is often associated with a normal weight instead of the stereotypically visualization of hunger, which includes children with bloated bellies, sunken eyes, and skinny limbs.

If we want to curb our nation’s food insecurity epidemic, we must collectively change the way we view, treat, and talk about poverty in the United States.

How to Fight Hunger In Your Community
8 Strategies to Fight Hunger in Your Community:

1| Organize a food sorting play date

Call your local food pantry to determine the next food donation delivery date and time. Let the food pantry know you hope to organize a volunteer day for kids. Older kids can inspect the food for expired product and damaged goods. Younger kids can organize the food by product while the parents carry heavy items to storage.

2| Learn about the #GiveHealthy campaign

#GiveHealthy uses technology so people can donate fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and other healthy food to local food pantries and organizations. To get involved and learn how it works, visit Give Healthy.

3| Know the best canned foods to donate

When donating food, know which foods are the most nourishing and non-perisable. Food pantries appreciate canned foods such as:

  • canned tuna or salmon
  • canned chicken
  • canned beef
  • peanut butter
  • canned beans
  • canned fruits and vegetables that contain no added salt or sugar

4| Donate garden surplus

Every vegetable counts. While one piece of produce seems small, it makes a big difference in someone’s life. If everyone donated garden surplus to a local food pantry, there would be plenty of food to share. Storage space for fresh produce might not be available. Ask the food pantry when they distribute the food and drop of the produce off at that time.

8 things YOU can do to fight hunger in your community

Click To Tweet

5| Don’t forget toiletries

Food is always needed but toiletries are important and often overlooked. The best items to donate include: shampoo, soap, toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, diapers, and laundry detergent.

6| Pass on your FREE plastic shopping bags

When you are done shopping at the grocery store, instead of tossing out the plastic shopping bags, donate them to your local food pantry. Food pantries need bags to pack and distribute the food.

  You might also like: Clean Eating is a Privilege Not Just a Choice


7| Share your passion in life!

Reach out to your local food pantry and volunteer your interests and expertise. While it’s great to have people available to pack food for client pick up, it’s even better to have people with passion. Sample ideas and passion donations to the Al Beech Food Pantry include:

  • Student volunteers have played their instruments during food distribution. Our clients experience the sounds of flutes, guitars, and pianos while picking up their food orders.
  • A college student volunteer brought her gift of photography to help with the social media promotion of our FREE bi-weekly farmer’s market.
  • A senior gentleman volunteer built us new shelves to ensure safety of our volunteers.
8 Things You Can Do To Fight Hunger In Your Community from @ClancyCHarrison

Click To Tweet

8| Transform thoughts through compassion

Learn about hunger by listening to stories around you. If you have been on a food assistance program yourself, refer to it as a positive influence in your life. For example, if you participated in the National School Lunch Program, consider how it helped you succeed in school. Would you have been able to concentrate on your spelling test? Would you be where you are today if you did not have access to the program?

My mission is to decrease the stigma associated with food assistance programs in the hopes that more families will take advantage of programs such as food stamps and school nutrition programs. Food assistance programs give parents access to better food options and decrease the stress caused by the fear of running out of food.

Clancy Cash Harrison MS, RDN, FAND is a Registered Dietitian, Author of Feeding Baby, TEDx Speaker, and Food Justice Advocate. Learn more on her website and follow her on Facebook & Twitter.

Photos courtesy of Clancy Harrison

Hi! I'm Sally, a dietitian-mom.

I believe that EVERY mom can feel successful and confident about feeding her kids, lose the stress, and finally enjoy mealtime again.

Sign up for my weekly emails for support and inspiration (plus dinner ideas!) and I'll send you 16 game-changing tips for feeding your kids--even the super-duper picky ones.

  • Share
  • Tweet

Filed Under: Family Life Tagged With: food assistance, food pantry, hunger, volunteer

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Nathan says

    May 26, 2018 at 12:20 pm

    I was once in need of a food pantry. I was between jobs and money was non existent. I was psyched to find a food pantry near me, I was that in need. I was however mortified. I was handed a brown paper bag and had to walk down a handout line of boy scouts. One young man would put corn in my bag the next boy would give me bread and so on. It was humiliating. Wanting to teach your kids to help others is great. But here I was a grown man taking handouts from a line of kids. I’m going to form a pantry in my area that does not do things like that to adults who are already struggling with being unemployed or whatever their situation. Little Johnny can earn his community service badge somewhere else and little and the little kids and their soccer mom can feel good about themselves somewhere else.

    Reply
    • Sally says

      May 27, 2018 at 5:08 pm

      I’m glad you found a pantry to help you during that transition. While I respect your right to feel however you feel about this, I do know as a parent that children really want to (and like to) help adults, since they are more often in the position of receiving help themselves. I’m sorry to hear you felt humiliated by their help, but I’m guessing they were very grateful for the chance to give it. Teaching children the power of service–and that everyone needs help sometimes, kids and grown-ups–is so important.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Warren & the World Vol 5, Issue 21 ‹ Story Warren says:
    June 3, 2017 at 6:02 am

    […] Read more. […]

    Reply
  2. This School's Program To Help Fight Hunger Will Inspire You! says:
    March 20, 2018 at 9:59 am

    […] You might also like: 8 Things You Can Do To Fight Hunger In Your Community […]

    Reply
  3. Give back to your community on World Food Day says:
    October 8, 2019 at 12:51 pm

    […] and good to donate food to local food banks, churches and so on, it can be even more helpful to lend a hand, according to Real Mom Nutrition. Whether that's to distribute food for a night or two, or to […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get it!

How To See Seven UT & AZ National Parks In Six Days

How to Make An Epic ALDI Cheese Board

Veggie Nuggets

Healthy Veggie Nuggets Recipe That Kids LOVE!

Copyright © 2021 Real Mom Nutrition · Site Design by Rita Barry. Banner images by Michelle Daniel Photography
Disclosure & Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · Brunch Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

End mealtime battles TONIGHT!

Get this free bonus download.

You'll also get my weekly message. Unsubscribe anytime.

x