Hunger

United Way of Story County embraced hunger as one of our four community impact areas shortly following the 2005 community needs assessment. According to the Iowa Department of Education during the 2010-2011 school year, the free and reduced lunch programs by school districts are as follows:

Ames – 23.3%
Ballard – 19.8%
Collins/Maxell – 25.2%
Colo-Nesco – 28.9%
Gilbert – 7.9%
Nevada – 34.5%
Roland/Story – 18.9%

In December 2010, three of Ames Community School District’s five elementary schools had free and reduced lunch rates over 40%, with Kate Mitchell being 47%.

In 2007, UWSC formed a collaboration among the food pantries in Story County with the purpose to educate staff and volunteers, coordinate efforts and share best practices. There are now 16 food pantries in Story County. Iowa State University Extension and other groups present educational information at each meeting. Topics include Plant A Row for the Hungry; Spend Smart, Eat Smart; Angel Food Ministries; and SHARE. Discussions include a wide variety of topics such as ideas for holiday food distribution, food storage and use of the Food Bank of Iowa.

In addition to the creating the Food Pantry Collaboration, United Way of Story County has provided grant funding to various programs throughout the county that address hunger. United Way of Story County’s fourth annual LIVE UNITED Food Drive is scheduled for May 2012. A new partnership was formed with Monsanto in the fall of 2010 during the Farm Progress Show held between Boone and Ames. Monsanto worked with United Way of Story County to raise more than 3,500 pounds of food and more than $2,500 in cash. Monsanto matched the donations with $1 for every pound of food collected and every dollar donated. The match from Monsanto was over $6,000.

In 2011, Monsanto matched the LIVE UNITED food drive which collected over 13,000 pounds of food. This food drive was the biggest United Way has sponsored and brought in $10,000 match from Monsanto. The LIVE UNITED Food Drive is now held annually during the month of May to help stock shelves and bring awareness to the community that usage at food pantries increase because children are home for the summer.

These efforts to address the issue of hunger in Story County do not include the many programs and services available through other organizations. Despite our efforts to address the problem, we know that the number of people in our county who go to bed hungry at night is much higher than most of our general population recognizes. Because of that we developed a Hunger Collaboration to work with others in our community to create a plan that educates our communities that there is a need and to work together to significantly reduce the incidence of hunger in our community.

It is important that we study the “why” of hunger so that we can create a community-wide action plan that not only addresses the immediate needs, but works on developing solutions that can be identified and acted upon.