Today I replied to a tweet by Perry Drake @pddrake that was part of a conversation about St. Louis well actually Missouri being first in hunger in the country. Needless to say I'm enraged that in 2013 so many people are not getting enough to eat in my state. This really hit close to home for me because of how I grew up. So here's a little background to give you some perspective of where I'm coming from.
I won't tell my life story but we grew up pretty poor. My father died when I was five years old and my mother as a single woman in the 70's did the best she could to raise both myself and my sister. She was college educated and hard working so I'm not talking about some single mom with no skills, but even with that education it was difficult for her to get by. She actually did well considering the circumstances but there were times when if she hadn't been working with our church and giving of her time despite not having much to give that we wouldn't have had food on the table. There were many Thanksgiving's when the turkey came from our local food pantry which was usually St. Bridget's the church we attended.
So getting back to the subject at hand I think there's more that we can be doing as a city to create jobs and skill training that will ultimately improve the hunger statics. I don't think it's possible to totally end hunger but I think we could put one hell of a dent in it if the entire community got behind creating opportunities in St. Louis for new businesses which would lead to more jobs equaling less people needing the help of food pantries. That's something that Mayor Slay can help with by making it easier for businesses to open in the city which was pointed out to him at the Let's Talk event hosted by Jack Dorsey (@Jack) a couple weeks ago.
So for now what can you do? Give to your local food pantry and educate yourself on what your next door neighbor may be going through. The face of hunger in this country has changed so don't think it's just the homeless that are affected by this. It could be someone that you talk to every day. Find out more about what's going on in Missouri here http://feedingmissouri.org/hunger-in-missouri
I've included a link to a Storify so you can follow this conversation and keep it going. Let's do something about this problem and have a positive impact http://sfy.co/dPiP Also here's the STLToday Story about the food issues in Missouri.
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