As long as you’re not starving, our job’s been well done. This is how SNAP views it’s poverty stricken lower class citizens. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program better known by its acronym SNAP is, as stated by www.centeronbudget.org the nation’s most important anti-hunger program. Yet it hinders lower class single working mothers from becoming empowered, independent model citizens. Barbie Izquierdo, introduced in the documentary A Place At the Table, struggled with hunger, while attempting to care for herself and her two small children. Food insecurity, not having the necessary financial stability to support a household’s healthy diet, plagues one in every seven Americans. Partly because our food assistance program has an inefficient system of only supporting those who do not work and drastically cutting the funds of the hard working single parents who have jobs but only receive minimum wage and cannot support themselves and their children. Hunger in America is an issue that can be prevented by creating a new policy that works case by case with single parents to bridge the gap between complete dependency on government assistance and working mothers who make to much to qualify, yet do not make enough to survive.
A place at the table documents Barbie’s life starting after the recent loss of her job. Barbie states “The assistance programs in the United States are very hard to qualify for. It’s like either you’re starving or you don’t get any help. But what defines starving? If you don’t eat for a day, are you starving? In their eyes no, but in your eyes, and the way you feel, of course.” (A Place At the Table). Barbie received food stamps that lasted three weeks out of the month, and for the last week, experienced extreme food insecurity. An article by ElishaFieldstadt of NBC News releases a statement from Marianne Smith Vargas chief philanthropy officer at food bank of southeastern Virginia stating that “We are hearing story after story about how a family was making ends meet on what they received in food stamps prior to the cut. Now, even the smallest cut is forcing them to come to the food bank for help.” These food banks are one of many possible solutions that should be offered to starving American families. In a time when federal aids fail to provide a feasible solution, fellow Americans rise to the occasion, and help where they are needed.
A place at the table documents Barbie’s life starting after the recent loss of her job. Barbie states “The assistance programs in the United States are very hard to qualify for. It’s like either you’re starving or you don’t get any help. But what defines starving? If you don’t eat for a day, are you starving? In their eyes no, but in your eyes, and the way you feel, of course.” (A Place At the Table). Barbie received food stamps that lasted three weeks out of the month, and for the last week, experienced extreme food insecurity. An article by ElishaFieldstadt of NBC News releases a statement from Marianne Smith Vargas chief philanthropy officer at food bank of southeastern Virginia stating that “We are hearing story after story about how a family was making ends meet on what they received in food stamps prior to the cut. Now, even the smallest cut is forcing them to come to the food bank for help.” These food banks are one of many possible solutions that should be offered to starving American families. In a time when federal aids fail to provide a feasible solution, fellow Americans rise to the occasion, and help where they are needed.