How many times have we heard our children, grandchildren or nieces and nephews say, “I’m hungry?” Such announcements often come about 45 minutes after having scarfed down a good-sized bowl of chili, a grilled cheese sandwich and perhaps an apple and a glass of milk; maybe not exactly that meal, but something equivalent and you get the idea. What they usually mean is, “I’m bored.”
When I was a kid, admittedly quite a few years ago, when my sister and I didn’t want to eat our oatmeal or something else we found distasteful at the time, our parents would chide us by telling us there were children in third world countries who were starving and would love to have what was left on our plates. Of course having no clue as to the enormity of it all, we would laughingly offer to send it to them. That didn’t go over very well and we soon learned that being sassy would get us nowhere we wanted to go.
In reality, throughout the world, hunger claims the lives of children every day. Even here, in the greatest nation in the world, 1 in 5 children live in households that are unable to always provide adequate food. These statistics shock us, make us angry, and may even cause us to refute the numbers and/or to blame corruption or misuse of taxpayers’ money for the injustice. Regardless, the fact remains. We know that hunger does exist and we, as a community, must continue to heighten awareness.
November 10 through November 18 is National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week. At this time more than ever, homeless shelters and other social service agencies reach out to those on our streets, in tent cities, sleeping under bridges, in abandoned buildings, old cars or anywhere else, that is unfit for human habitation. Sadly, children are among them. Maybe we can think of them the next time a child we love says, “I’m hungry.”
By Marilyn Cipollone
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