Sodexo Foundation
No Vacation for School Lunches

The Personal Impact of Rising Food Costs

For months we’ve been reading the grim news about the impact of rising food costs on people and nations around the world. Rationing and food riots in the developing world. Wrenching choices—food or medicine or gas—in the United States. We discussed the choices people are making in response to rising food prices in the U.S. with four people feeling the pinch in very different ways.

Maggie – Boston, MA
Amy – Rockville, MD
John – Northern Maine
Travis – Colorado Springs, CO
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Midwest Food Banks Mobilize to Help Flood, Tornado Victims

When terrifying tornados and severe flooding rocked Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin last month, Food Banks in those states and beyond quickly stepped in to feed displaced residents. In Indiana, Gleaners Food Bank set up mobile pantries in hard-hit cities in Central and Southern Indiana. Gleaners shipped nearly 40 tons of food and supplies to Indianapolis and to four surrounding counties whose regular food provider was knocked out of operation by the flooding.
In Wisconsin, the Second Harvest Food Bank of Southern Wisconsin, located in Madison, supplied food to flood victims and volunteers. Working in concert with the Red Cross and Salvation Army, the Food Bank loaded two trucks with thousands of hot meals and baked goods for delivery to the hardest-hit areas.

Iowa bore the brunt of the flooding damage, with wide swaths of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City simply washed away. Food Banks throughout the state joined with colleagues dispatched from America’s Second Harvest – The Nation's Food Bank Network affiliates from Chicago and New Orleans to feed thousands of displaced Iowans. The HACAP Food Reservoir in Hiawatha, a member of America’s Second Harvest, reports shipping 120,000 pounds of food in just one week…they typically average about 100,000 pounds per month.

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Teen Homelessness Epidemic Among LGBT Youth

Over the course of a year, between 2.5 and 3.5 million Americans will live either on the streets or in an emergency shelter. Almost half of them will be young people.1 And somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of these homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).2 On the streets they experience the challenges facing all homeless people: crime, poverty, ill health, and hunger. In fact, homeless children go hungry twice as often as other children.3

Many LGBT youth wind up homeless after coming out to their families. Fortunately, a growing number of community centers around the country provide a safe, welcoming environment for them. At these LGBT-focused centers they may find a place to live, food to eat, and services to help them regain their lives. According to Terry Stone, Executive Director of CenterLink, a national organization that supports LGBT-focused community centers, meal programs play a critical role in many homeless teens’ survival. “Some centers provide teens with the only meal they’ll have that day. Nutritious food and snacks are hard to come by on the streets and kids rely on LGBT-focused centers to not only feed them, but accept them for who they are.”

1 National Alliance to End Homelessness

2 Ray, N. (2006). Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth: An epidemic of homelessness. New York: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute and the National Coalition for the Homeless.

3 National Alliance to End Homelessness

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Sodexo Foundation Honors Young Activists

Continuing its commitment to the 35 million Americans who are at risk of hunger, the Sodexo Foundation honored a new generation of activists who are making a difference in the fight against hunger and its root causes. At its annual dinner in Washington, DC the Foundation awarded $3,000 scholarships to five K-college students from Nevada, California, New York, Colorado and Virginia. A matching $3,000 donation to the hunger-related organization of their choice was also part of the award.

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