HUNGER IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Isn't "hunger" something that predominates in Third World countries? Hunger is usually the result of natural disaster, such as droughts and tsunamis, right? Real hunger doesn't happen in this country - we're the richest country in the world! Is hunger in South Carolina a reality?

Hunger in South Carolina is a reality.

The federal term for "hunger" is "food insecurity." A food insecure household is defined as a household which "...at some time during the year, [was] uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources." In other words, that means a family is too poor to afford food. This is hunger in America, and it's the situation of over 36 million people, including 13 million children.

How poor is "poverty?" The 2005 poverty threshold is defined by the US Department of Health and Human Services as an annual income of $19,350 for a family of four. (Read that last sentence again. I don't know about you, but I just bought a new car and it cost more than that.)

The South has a disproportionately large share of the nation's poor population. While 35% of the U.S. population lives in the South, 38% of persons below the poverty level live in the South. Fifteen percent of South Carolinians of all ages live in poverty, over 20% of children under 5 in this state live in poverty.

South Carolina food banks provide emergency and commodity food supplies to nearly 40,000 households each year. The audience includes the working poor, children, pregnant and parenting adolescents, needy seniors, the homebound elderly, and the limited resource Hispanic population. According to the America's Second Harvest, over 35% of food insecure households include children younger than age 18 and over 20% include seniors age 65 or older.

The Community Food Bank of the Piedmont in Mauldin provides deliveries of foodstuffs to various pantries, emergency food kitchens, shelters, churches and ministries across ten counties of the upstate of South Carolina including Abbeville, Anderson, Cherokee, Greenville, Greenwood, Laurens, Oconee, Pickens, Spartanburg and Union Counties.

The Community Food Bank of the Piedmont is an umbrella organization serving as a central distribution warehouse for hundreds of food pantries, emergency shelters, churches, food kitchens and other ministries across the Upstate. Through network agencies, The Community Food Bank of the Piedmont is able to reach the nearly 175,000 hungry individuals living in the ten counties it serves. Among this harsh figure, nearly 60,000 are children.

Hunger in South Carolina is a reality indeed.