A school bell rings.  Children rush through hallways and doors, laughing, tripping, talking loudly, imitating their friends.  Everything is as you would remember from your own elementary school days, with the substitution of slightly more modern styles.  By mid-day, innocent kids happily fill the lunchroom halls, snack packs and milk money in hand.  A boy throws applesauce at some girl, probably because he likes her.  They eat ravenously, having just come from PE class.

All kids show up to the lunchroom hungry.  They’re growing, and that’s normal.  But if you start looking closely, you notice some keep going back, asking for more, taking from their friends, or even hiding food in their bags to take home.  The truth is that these kids are hungry, really hungry, and not getting enough to eat at home.  On Mondays, it’s worse — some of them haven’t eaten since the last free meal they had as part of a school lunch program.  Government programs can’t send food home with kids (meals have to be consumed on location).

This week I attended an event called “Hunger Talks,” put on by a group of college students committed to making  a difference.  I was told I was going to get a good meal, and hear speakers about problems related to hunger.  What I didn’t realize was that I’d be randomly assigned an economic class as soon as I arrived (the same way children have no control over their economic circumstances), and given a sack lunch that reflected what I was able to afford to eat.  As those sitting next to me tore in to classic PB&J sandwiches, or at least crackers, I stared down at a measly, half-full baggie of peanuts.  Realizing it meant that some kids were scrounging spare snacks from their friends, I lost all appetite.

I thought back to the last time I was really hungry (yes, it took some effort).  It had been maybe 6-7 hours since my last meal, and there had been a lot of walking.  I was irritable, impossible to get along with, easily distracted, had a slight headache. Had I been a child, trying to get through lessons on elementary algebra and sentence structure, I would have fallen rapidly behind.  What else would I be missing out on?

Can it be that our kids aren’t getting enough to eat?  Doesn’t that seem like a problem for Haiti, or more distant lands?  Talking to a few locals, I discovered that wasn’t the case.

For years I was just like you–I didn’t know my neighbors might be going hungry.  The only time anyone in my home went hungry was when they were on a diet.  But that’s not true for most Americans, living paycheck to paycheck.  

– Kelly Jones, for Secret Meals for Hungry Children

It’s easy to live our comfortable lives and know that we live in a nation of opportunity.  We think of hunger as something that happens overseas.  But it’s something that affects people in our own school districts.  In fact, hunger is a national problem.  In Alabama, it’s a crisis: 1 in 4 children in the state go hungry, and the number is on the rise.

What’s worse? In April of 2011 Alabama was struck by a series of devastating tornadoes, leaving many homes demolished, businesses torn apart, and lives to be pieced back together.  Tuscaloosa, a city in the heart of the damage, has seen a 22% increase in the number of families going hungry since that date.  And that statistic hasn’t stopped rising.

The South has a complicated history, and possibly we’re proud of just how complicated it is.  Much of its prized culture (and food) comes from the agricultural roots that gave us food like Shrimp n Grits, Collards with Fatback, and cobblers you’d die for.  It used to be that the Paula Deen meal you were eating was meant to fuel you for a day of hard labor, or to sustain you through a harsh winter of scarcity.  Between that and how cheap a McDonald’s hamburger is, aren’t we more concerned with childhood obesity?

With this question gnawing at me, I did some searching online on my own, and found numerous studies from the CDC and health experts nationwide that point to a direct, positive correlation between being on food stamps, and being obese.  Hunger in America doesn’t necessarily have a thin face–junk food is cheap food, and if you’re only eating burgers when you do get to eat, your body’s bound to store.  Children don’t choose how family money is spent, or where it comes from, making them the downstream victims of our lack of good food.

The best part? It costs only $120 to feed a child for the year with Secret Meals.

Childhood hunger doesn’t get talked about.  Not, at least, when it’s happening in our own back yards.  We have many reasons why we don’t think about it — it’s not comfortable to admit, and maybe we don’t understand it.  But sometimes we get trapped in this bootstraps mentality that people go hungry when they’re irresponsible with their lives.  It’s easy to see people taking advantage of welfare and food stamp systems.  But here, we’re talking about children. They don’t have the ability to suck the system dry — they’re not the ones who’s income is being judged. Kids have little or no control over their own circumstances, but we, as community members, as teachers, as mentors, tutors, faith groups, parents, and helpers, have the ability to help prevent this problem.

So what can you do to fight child hunger?

Luckily, that’s an easy question.

1. Educate: get the word out through your neighborhood, PTA, or faith group, and see how others can help.

2. Do a food Drive: donate with friends and neighbors to a local food bank.  Donations of almost any kind are welcomed, and it’s easy to find a local food bank to take them!

3. Donate: find a local organization, like Secret Meals, who will help fight child hunger in your own area.

4. Garden: grow food, and share it.  Help kids learn how food is made, and what makes it good.  When kids understand what it means to eat a vegetable, they do. And making smarter choices brings us one step closer to solving the problem.

5. Host a Hunger Banquet: share stories of hunger in your area, and call on others to act.  Check out these resources from Oxfam America to see how you can help others understand what it means to be hungry.

6.  Think: if we can’t keep our children fed, how are we to educate them?

At the end of the program, I was reminded that I was in the South, and at a church nonetheless.  Families started carting out tray after tray after platter after platter of food casseroles.  There really is a casserole for everything.  I couldn’t have been prouder of the people I knew who turned out, who cooked, and who spoke up for the kids in our area. Filling huge tables for a sizable (and now very hungry) group, we ate well, sharing a meal over ideas about how we could work together to help.  Food brought us together, and not just for the one event.

Our community will fight to end child hunger.

What will yours do?