As advocates in Missouri much of our time is spent working the halls of Jefferson City, especially from January-May. Many of us use summer as a time to relax and take a breath. This summer, though, has not been a time of relaxation. Our work has merely shifted from Jefferson City to Washington DC.  This...Lee mas

Are we really debating whether it is worth spending money to feed our children? Missouri’s kids deserve three meals a day without demanding they prove they are poor enough to get fed. For most of the pandemic, the Federal Government covered the cost of school lunches for every child in a public school in America....Lee mas

Getting a raise or landing a better paying job sounds like great news, especially if your income is low enough that you need additional support to meet your family’s basic needs. But that pay increase comes with a big catch for families who use programs with income thresholds – programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition...Lee mas

Food Insecurity in the U.S. and Here at Home in Missouri More than 34 million people experience food insecurity in the United States. That includes 9 million children and more than 5 million adults aged 60 and older.   That is 10.2% of Americans in total.  Imagine a room of people randomly selected from any...Lee mas

The pandemic and its impact on our economy hit all of us hard, and illuminated the struggles low-wage workers face in ways that we had not seen for a long time. Workers with low incomes were less able to stay home, less likely to have sick leave to care for themselves and their families, and...Lee mas

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation’s largest anti-hunger program and helps millions of people who are at risk for food insecurity every month. Specifically, SNAP is vitally important to low income seniors across our nation.  In 2020, more than 5 million adults ages 60 and older were food-insecure, meaning they had limited...Lee mas

Just a few weeks into the new school year, many families are learning that after two years of all Missouri public school children receiving free school lunches, the School Lunch Program has returned to pre-pandemic form. Back in March of 2020, many Federal child nutrition waivers were offered as a form of COVID-19 relief. These...Lee mas

This past spring, as the school year was winding down, nonprofits across the country began working on plans to implement their summer feeding programs for kids. Planning was harder than usual though, as nonprofits were unsure what this summer would look like. The waivers that were put into place in March 2020 in light of...Lee mas

Earlier this month, the Food Assistance and Hunger in the Heartland Report was released. This is a first of its kind-a comprehensive research study about nutrition access and hunger commissioned by a Missouri based entity! Feeding Missouri, the association of the six Missouri based Feeding America Food Banks, commissioned this statewide research project from the MU...Lee mas

In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), sometimes known as the welfare reform bill. Buried deep within that sweeping legislation was a provision that hardly received any debate, but has had lifelong implications for millions of Americans. This provision imposed a lifetime ban on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program...Lee mas