Food Security in a Broken System (by Sara Hahn)

On a theoretical level, I understand the agony of hunger; but I have been fortunate that so far in my life, food security has never been an issue for me.  As a middle-class American citizen, I have been lucky to always know where my next meal is coming from and how I can access nutritional options. 

Sarah Sontara of FoodShare

Regardless, this is not the case for 50 million Americans or a billion people around the world, who do not eat three nutritious meals a day.  This was illustrated powerfully in today's workshop on hunger in the United States. 

Sarah M. Sontara of FoodShare (www.foodshare.org) spoke to us about the food insecurity situation in Connecticut, but the takeaway extends far beyond the state or the USA.  In a role-play, we were divided so that some of us acted as grocers, social service workers, and SNAP (food stamp) distributors.  The rest received cards that explained our identities, incomes, and money available to pay for food.

Lubna enjoying the role-play

I was given the role of a single father raising three children, who has only $7 a day left over after paying for rent, utilities, a car, etc.  I was ineligible for SNAP, and the social services office was always either closed or unhelpful.  But I was one of the lucky ones: others were undocumented, and thus they could not even attempt to access social services for fear of deportation.  Snagged in the bureaucracy, hardly any of us were able to afford food that was sufficiently nutritious and substantive enough to feed our families. 

The lesson was powerful on several levels.  It helped all of us empathize with the immense difficulty of hunger, and to better understand the tangled web of social services.  But it also struck me on a more personal level.  In a few weeks, I begin graduate school to be a social worker.  But do I really want to enter a field of work where I become the face of a bureaucratic, unhelpful governmental program?  Can I really be effective if the system is broken? 

Ms Ms. Sontara pointed out, "the social workers are frazzled, too.  They handle thousands of cases.  They don't have the resources or support they need to handle these situations." 

It seems to me that there are more effective and efficient models out there: rights-based approaches, which acknowledge the urgency of food security and allocate the funding and resources necessary for social service workers to do their jobs and for the hungry to access the food they need.  It is my hope that this is a system I can help become a reality. 

How do we make this happen?  Maybe I'll find the answers in my future studies.  I am certain that it requires a combination of advocacy, transparency and  accountability.  I think that other countries have models that the U.S. should examine and emulate with humility.  And I think answers are to be found in the rich, dynamic community of the UNESCO International Forum and the perspectives of the many people with knowledge and experience in this field.  I'm honored to be learning with everyone here, and eager to see what new solutions we find.