In politics, humanitarian aid, and social science, hunger is a condition in which a person, for a sustained period, is unable to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs. So in the field of hunger relief, the term hunger is used in a sense that goes beyond the common desire for food that all humans experience.
The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal programme of the Government of India designed to better the nutritional standing of school-age children nationwide. The programme supplies free lunches on working days for children in primary and upper primary classes in government, government aided, local body, Education Guarantee Scheme, and alternate innovative education centres, Madarsa and Maqtabs supported under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and National Child Labour Project schools run by the ministry of labour. Serving 120,000,000 children in over 1,265,000 schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, it is the largest of its kind in the world.
The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act is a United States federal law that created the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to provide low-cost or free school lunch meals to qualified students through subsidies to schools. The program was established as a way to prop up food prices by absorbing farm surpluses, while at the same time providing food to school age children. It was named after Richard Russell, Jr., signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in 1946, and entered the federal government into schools dietary programs on June 4, 1946.
The Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (CNA) is a United States federal law (act) signed on October 11, 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Act was created as a result of the "years of cumulative successful experience under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to help meet the nutritional needs of children." The National School Lunch Program feeds 30.5 million children per day. NSLP was operated in over 101,000 public and nonprofit private schools in 2007. The Special Milk Program, functioning since 1954, was extended to June 30, 1970 and incorporated into the act. The act also provided Federal funding assistance towards non-food purchases for school equipment.
The Northwestern University Dance Marathon, commonly known as NUDM, is a philanthropic dance marathon held every March at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1975, NUDM is one of the nation's most established and largest entirely student-run philanthropies. NUDM is one of the only annual Dance Marathons in the country to continually change its primary beneficiary. NUDM has raised over $1 million for its beneficiaries each year since 2011, and involves over 1,000 students participating as dancers and committee members. Since 1997, the Evanston Community Foundation has been NUDM's secondary beneficiary.
A school meal or school lunch is a meal provided to students and sometimes teachers at a school, typically in the middle or beginning of the school day. Countries around world offer various kinds of school meal programs. Each week day, millions of children from all standards and grades receive meals at their respective schools. School meals provide high-energy food with high nutritional values either free or at economical rates.
The Arkansas Foodbank is a non-profit food bank located in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Arkansas Foodbank distributed more than 20.9 million pounds of food and grocery products to its member agencies for Arkansans in need in 2013, according to Chief Executive Officer, Rhonda Sanders.
Houston Food Bank is a solution to both hunger and food waste. In the year following Hurricane Harvey the Food Bank distributed 122 million nutritious meals through its network of 1,500 community partners, including food pantries, soup kitchens, social service providers, and schools in southeast Texas. The Food Bank distributes fresh produce, meat and nonperishables from their warehouse at 535 Portwall, where they also prepare nutritious hot meals for kids in the Keegan Kitchen. Houston Food Bank works with grocery stores and growers to rescue food before it reaches landfills with a focus on fresh healthy food. Additional community services include nutrition education and SNAP application assistance. They feed hungry people in 18 counties within southeast Texas alongside their partner food banks in Montgomery County, Galveston and Brazos Valley. The Houston Food Bank, founded in 1982, is a certified member of Feeding America, the nation’s food bank network, with a four-star rating from Charity Navigator.
Project Bread's Walk for Hunger is the oldest continual pledge walk in the United States and the largest annual one-day fundraiser to alleviate local hunger in Massachusetts.
Feed the Children, established in 1979 and headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is a non-profit organization focused on alleviating childhood hunger. Their mission is "providing hope and resources for those without life's essentials." It provides food, essentials, education supplies and disaster relief to those in need across the United States and in 10 countries around the world. Domestically, it operates five distribution centers located in Oklahoma, Indiana, California, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
Martha's Table is a non-profit organization, an active charity and volunteer center in Washington, D.C. The mission of Martha's Table is to support strong children, strong families, and strong communities by increasing access to high-quality education, healthy food, and family and community supports. Martha's Table believes that every child - regardless of zip code - deserves the opportunity for their brightest future and a deeply engaged family and community committed to their success. Many of the organization's endeavors are accomplished through the work of its service program—hosting more than 14,000 volunteers annually.
Fill the Cup is a campaign of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency. In 2009, WFP plans to feed over 100 million people in 77 of the world’s poorest countries. "Fill the Cup" aims to use the symbol of the Red Cup to raise awareness of global hunger, specifically involving hungry school children. About 59 million primary school age children attend school hungry across the developing world, with 23 million of them in 45 African countries.
Philabundance is a non-profit food bank that serves the Philadelphia and Delaware Valley region of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the largest such organization in the region.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 is a federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 13, 2010. The bill is part of the reauthorization of funding for child nutrition. The bill funds child nutrition programs and free lunch programs in schools for the next 5 years. In addition, the bill sets new nutrition standards for schools, and allocates $4.5 billion for their implementation. The new nutrition standards have been a point initiative of First Lady Michelle Obama in her fight against childhood obesity as part of her Let's Move! initiative. In FY 2011, federal spending totaled $10.1 billion for the National School Lunch Program. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act allows USDA, for the first time in 30 years, opportunity to make real reforms to the school lunch and breakfast programs by improving the critical nutrition and hunger safety net for millions of children. Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act and Michelle Obama were a step in transforming the food pyramid recommendation, which has been around since the early 1990s, into what is now known as "MyPlate".
There were 795 million undernourished people in the world in 2014, a decrease of 216 million since 1990, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone—7 billion people—and could feed more than that—12 billion people.
Eastern Illinois Foodbank (EIF) opened its doors in June 1983. It was formed as part of a major regional effort to develop an emergency food network in central Illinois. The foodbank’s primary role is to serve as a consistent source of food and grocery products for 220 agencies and programs to serve the hungry in 14 counties. The EIF now distributes more than 6 million pounds of food annually on a budget of just over $1 million. Food distributed by the EIF now reaches more than 100,000 people annually.
School meal programs in the United States provide school meals free of charge, or at a government-subsidized price, to U.S. students from low-income families. These free or subsidized meals have the potential to increase household food security, which can improve children's health and expand their educational opportunities. A study of a free school meal program in the United States found that providing free meals to elementary and middle school children in areas characterized by high food insecurity led to increased school discipline among the students.
The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) began in 1968. It was an amendment to the National School Lunch Act. Today, the SFSP is the largest federal resource available for local sponsors who want to combine a child nutrition program with a summer activity program. Sponsors can be public or private groups, such as non-profit organizations, government entities, churches, universities, and camps. The government reimburses sponsors for the food at a set rate. There are still communities that have not created a Summer Food Service Program in their community. For those individuals that want to help ensure children have meals during the summer, they can get more information from the USDA or their state government agencies.
School feeding programs have been defined by the World Bank as "targeted social safety nets that provide both educational and health benefits to the most vulnerable children, thereby increasing enrollment rates, reducing absenteeism, and improving food security at the household level". Beyond improvements in access to food, school feeding programs also have a positive impact on nutritional status, gender equity, and educational status, each of which contributes to improving overall levels of country and human development.
Bread Line Inc. is a nonprofit organization that seeks "to inspire community collaboration to enrich the lives of our most vulnerable neighbors with nutritious food served with dignity and respect". This organization has sought to accomplish this through a series of programs over 30 plus years of operation.
