According to No Kid Hungry, 1 in 6 kids is at risk of hunger in America, today. That is nearly 13 million children.
The severity of childhood hunger increases in the summer months because children are on summer break and are unable to receive access to regular meals through breakfast and lunch programs. Even though that is the case in the regular summer season, the pandemic has made the situation even worse with schools being closed and more families waiting on food banks and assistance.
No Kid Hungry’s page, “The Longest Summer: Childhood Hunger in the Wake of Coronavirus” illustrates the impact of Covid on the summer months with families struggling more than ever to provide for their children. The pandemic caused many parents to lose their jobs or be forced to work shorter hours. This resulted in parents having to skip their own meals or rent payments to ensure their children ate.
No Kid Hungry
No Kid Hungry is a national campaign launched in 2010 run by Share Our Strength, a nonprofit organization “working to solve problems of hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world.” In addition to their work in fighting child hunger, Share Our Strength invests in other programs such as Cooking Matters, which teaches families with a limited budget how to shop and cook healthier meals. They also support other nonprofit organizations and aid disaster relief.
No Kid Hungry’s mission is to end childhood hunger, and they believe everyone can help. On their site, they say, “[w]e believe that everyone has the strength to share to help ensure every individual can live a healthy and productive life.” Their hard work to get everyone involved with their mission has provided over 1 billion meals to children since they started back in 2010.
How We Helped
With summer break starting, the Aragon Research team wanted to ensure that children are able to enjoy their summer without going hungry and that their parents don’t have to stress about how they will provide their next meal. To help with California’s No Kid Hungry’s efforts, Aragon is providing monetary donations to ensure kids are fed and stay healthy through the summer months and the year!
Our monetary donation contributes to the many ways No Kid Hungry helps communities to provide food for children such as:
- School Meals
- Ensuring children receive healthy food they need at school.
- Grants
- Funding grants to schools, food banks, and community groups to help them get the supplies they need, such as meal carts, delivery trucks, refrigerators.
- Advocacy
- Helping to support policies across the nation to advocate for meal assistance programs and pushing to help feed children during the pandemic.
- Awareness
- Supporting their efforts to bring together high profile people, celebrities and famous chefs, to the media and major companies to understand the crisis and
- Research and Policy
- Providing experts, research, tools, and training to help others join in on their mission.
- Early Childhood
- Provides support to parents and caregivers with younger children, especially those struggling to make ends meet.
How You Can Help
“We all have different strengths to share in the fight to ensure every child in the United States gets the food they need. Whatever your strength, there’s a way you can share it to help kids.” – No Kid Hungry
You can join Aragon Research’s efforts and make a monetary donation! No Kid Hungry states that even $1 can provide 10 meals for kids.
And, that’s not all. No Kid Hungry provides various ways to get involved like making a donation when you shop or dine, hosting a fundraiser, attending one of their hosted events, and getting your voice out by urging local and state elected officials to support hungry children. You can take a peek at No Kid Hungry’s website to learn more.