Sobering Statistics on Hunger, Food Security
Provide Sense of Urgency to Catalyst Fund Membership
Grant to Area Program Addressing Hunger to be Awarded in November
(October 3, 2007) In April, members of the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain’s Catalyst Fund chose hunger and food security (or insecurity, depending on the perspective) as the issues they’d like to address in 2007. Last week, a pair of Connecticut authorities on these community challenges offered the group a litany of sobering statistics reinforcing the urgency of the choice they made.
Some 100,000 people in Greater Hartford – including approximately 40,000 children – rely on food assistance programs, according to Gloria McAdam, president and chief executive officer of Foodshare, the regional food bank for Hartford and Tolland Counties. These children, said McAdam, not only face nutritional challenges, but are also three times as likely to miss school.
“If we don’t make sure our kids have enough to eat, we are setting them up to fail,” said McAdam, whose food bank distributes more than 12 tons of food per day to 375 programs. In 2006, Foodshare distributed more than 1.1 million pounds of food – 550-plus tons – to agencies and programs serving Berlin, New Britain, Plainville and Southington.
And despite the seeming abundance of food banks, soup kitchens and community food drives, only six percent of all food assistance need, said McAdam, is met by private funding. The vast majority of this need – some 94 percent – is met through federal assistance programs.
In New Britain, said Lucy Nolan, executive director of End Hunger Connecticut!, such programs are being used by the vast majority of eligible families. While 65 percent of those eligible for food stamps statewide take advantage of the program, some 98 percent of those eligible in New Britain utilize food stamps.
McAdam and Nolan addressed the group at its second meeting of the year last week at The 
Orchards at Southington. As part of the meeting, the more than 50 members of the Catalyst Fund were invited to donate nonperishable food items; some 20 cartons of food and personal care items were collected and delivered to the pantry and soup kitchen at the Salvation Army in New Britain.
Catalyst Fund members will use the information and insight provided by McAdam and Nolan to help them award a $10,000 grant to a local community program or agency addressing these issues in Berlin, New Britain, Plainville and/or Southington. The membership holds its final meeting of the year in early November, at which time a grant awardee will be chosen.
The Catalyst Fund, created in 2003 with the support of the Robert C. Vance Foundation, is a grass roots community service initiative that provides a means by which citizens from all walks of life can participate in the philanthropic process. For a modest annual investment of $250, Catalyst Fund members annually select a charitable focus, convene educational sessions to learn about their issue and, at the end of each year, choose a nonprofit recipient specializing in the issue of choice to receive a grant.
To learn more about the Catalyst Fund, please contact Cheryl Farmer or Ann Bova, Community Foundation of Greater New Britain, at (860) 229-6018, or click here.
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