Eliminating Hunger and the Shame that Comes With It

Guest Blog post by our Child Nutrition Advocacy Manager, Anore Horton

This post is part of our month-long blog series in celebration of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' "National Nutrition Month." This year's theme is, "Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day," so each of us here at Hunger Free Vermont will take a turn to share a personal goal, story or fact regarding nutrition through daily blog posts throughout the month.

One of my responsibilities as the Child Nutrition Advocacy Manager is to help schools make sure that all the children who are eligible because of their families’ low incomes are enrolled and participating in their school meal programs. One of the most upsetting things I have discovered since coming to work at Hunger Free Vermont is that many families are too ashamed to complete the intrusive school meals application, even though they are struggling to put enough food on the table. Even more upsetting to me is that, in every school in Vermont, children and teenagers who are enrolled in school meal programs don’t use them. They would rather go hungry every day than experience the sense of shame that goes along with accepting government help in our society. Nothing motivates me more in my daily work than the desire to eliminate the shame and stigma that separates our children from one another in our schools, and that separates neighbors from one another in our communities. I don’t believe that we have any chance of ending childhood hunger in Vermont until we stop requiring our children to bear the burden of being categorized by their families’ income in their school cafeterias. Let’s provide universal school meals to all Vermont’s children, just as we provide universal math textbooks. We know children can’t learn and succeed without both!  If you’re intrigued by this idea, come hear national expert Dr. Jan Poppendieck, author of Free For All:  Fixing School Food in America, at UVM on Tuesday, March 26^th, from 4-6pm. Let’s start talking about how we can really transform education and nutrition for all of Vermont’s children!