This community service project aims to raise awareness about child hunger and its impact on academic performance. Students will partner with local organizations to serve lunch and host literacy activities at Caring Kitchen on May 26th. The event will involve reading groups, literacy workshops, and a parent session. The goals are to address hunger in the community and increase excitement for reading among children. Research shows that undernutrition harms cognitive development and school performance. Many children in the local Tucker Street area face socioeconomic disadvantages that contribute to hunger.
2. Focal Initiatives
Initiative III
Global Poverty
Initiative V
Social Justice and Human
Rights Initiative
3. Community Service Project Goal
OUR GOAL IS TO INCREASE PARENT
AND COMMUNITY AWARENESS OF
CHILD HUNGER AND ITS CORRELATION
TO THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF
CHILDREN.
4. Logistics
Who: Families of the Tucker Street
Community
What: Serving Lunch / Facilitating a
Literacy Workshop
Where: Caring Kitchen - 821 Tucker St
When: Saturday, May 26, 2012
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm
6. Caring Kitchen
Established January 1990
Serves the Tucker Street Community
Serves the homeless and hungry
Saturdays -11:30 am until 12:30pm
Sunday - 12:30 pm until 1:30pm
9. Effects of Child Hunger on
Academic Performance
Cognition and Academics Emotional & Social Well-Being
• Undernourished children • Aggressive and anxious.
0-3 years of age cannot
learn as much, as fast or • Teens are more likely to be
as well. suspended from school and
have difficulty getting along
• Lack of enough nutritious with other kids.
food impairs a child’s
ability to concentrate and
perform well in school.
10. The Facts on Literacy
• One in six children who are not reading proficiently in
third grade do not graduate from high school on time.
• Graduation rates for Black and Hispanic students
who were not proficient readers in third grade lagged
far behind those for White students with the same
reading skills.
• Some argue that prisons are built on 3rd grade
reading scores.
We are trying to capture pre-k to 3rd grade
with our community service project.
11. According to the U.S. Department
Agriculture, the percentage of Alamance
County residents living in poverty grew to
15.2 in 2009, as did the number of
Alamance County residents requesting
food assistance.
Thus, hunger continues to be a major issue
within Alamance County.
2011 Alamance Community Assessment Report
12. Tucker St. Community
• 50.8% are economically disadvantaged
• 21.6% of children live in poverty
• 91% of students are given free or
reduced lunch
13. HARVEY R. NEWLIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Performance of Students in Each Grade on the ABCs End-of-Grade Tests 2010-2011
Percentage of students' scores at or above grade level*
14. HARVEY R. NEWLIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Performance of Each Student Group on the ABCs End-of-Grade Tests 2010-2011
The percentage of students, grouped by gender, ethnicity and other factors, who passed
BOTH the reading and math tests.*
17. Service Project
Learning Outcomes
As a result of our literacy and hunger
community service project, we will be
able to:
1. Contribute to ending hunger through
a partnership with a local hunger
ministry
2. Increase parent and community
awareness regarding the importance
of family literacy
3. Increase children’s level of
excitement about learning through
reading and literacy activities.
4. Increase parent and community
awareness on how hunger affects
children’s academic performance
18. Schedule
• 8:30am-9:00am
– Travel to Caring Kitchen - 821 Tucker St.
• 9:00am-10:30am
– Serving Lunch
• 10:30am -11:30am
– Reading Groups
• Groups will be divided by grade level
– Literacy Activity
• Create your own book, skit or story
and book give away
• 11:30am -11:45pm
– Parent Session on Literacy
• 11:45am-12:00pm
- Wrap-up and Clean Up
20. Ways To Get Involved
1. Donate preschool to 3rd grade books
2. Donate perishable & nonperishable
items
3. Cash Donations
4. Serving food at the organization
5. Any items that can be used in the
household
22. References
• http://www.elon.edu/e-web/students/religious_life/offcampus/assembly.xhtml
• http://sandhills.news14.com/content/top_stories/618929/burlington-soup-
kitchen-reaches-to-community-for-help
• http://sandhills.news14.com/content/headlines/602910/caring-kitchen-
nourishes-body--soul/
• http://bag-church.org/Ministries/CaringKitchen.aspx
• Source: Food Research and Action Center, School Breakfast Scorecard
• USDA Household Food Security in the United States
• Food Research and Action Center, “Hunger Doesn't Take a Vacation:
Summer Nutrition Status Report
• 2011 Alamance County Community Assessment Report
• Harvey R. Newlin Elementary School’s 2010-2011 Report Card
Editor's Notes
Initiative II: Global Poverty“end hunger”“global partners for self-help projects and awareness campaigns within the United States” (local partner)Initiative V: Social Justice and Human Rights Initiative“children in homeless shelters”“training of parents as advocates for educational needs of children”Applying the two aforementioned initiatives to our service project allows us to bridge the gap between the global poverty on a local scale and education.
Video is linked if click on pictureCreated in Jan. 1990How it came to be:The Good Shepherd Kitchen, a soup kitchen in Burlington only served lunch Monday through Friday.Wanted to extend this to the weekend providing individuals with meals every day of the week.Provide a hot lunch to the homeless, low-income, and the shut-ins of the Burlington areaMotto: “More than a Soup KitchenMinistry affiliated with Burlington Assembly of God Church
Just say this is a picture of what services look like at the Caring kitchen or something like that.
THE FACTSFOOD SECURITYAll data refer to the year 2010. They are collected in 2010, and reported in September 2011.48.8 million Americans—including 16.2 million children—lack the means to get enough nutritiousfood on a regular basis. They live in food- insecure households and as a result, they struggle withhunger at some time during the year.Food insecurity—the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foodRates of food insecurity are substantially higher than the national average among householdswith incomes near or below the Federal poverty line, among households with children headedby single parents (35.1% of children living in a single-mom household are food-insecure), andamong Black and Hispanic households.POVERTY and UNEMPLOYMENTPoverty and unemployment are the root causes of hunger.· $22,350 in annual income is the poverty threshold for a family of four with two children (2011).· 46.2 million Americans—15.1 percent—live in poverty (2010). This is the largest number ofpeople living in poverty since estimates were first published (1956) and the highest poverty ratesince 1994.· 15.7 million children in America(2010) live in poverty, Over 200,000 more than the year before.
#1 – this is at a rate four times greater than that forproficient readers.The Annie E. Casey Foundation Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School GraduationThe study relies on a unique national database of 3,975 students born between 1979 and1989. The children’s parents were surveyed every two years to determine the family’s economicstatus and other factors, while the children’s reading progress was tracked using the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Reading Recognition subtest. The database reports whether students have finished high school by age 19, but does not indicate whether they actually dropped out.
52.74% of students in the Alamance-Burlington School System received free or reduced lunch during the 2010-2011 school year. The percentage of students included in the program has increased by 12.8% from 46% of district students who qualified during the 2006-2007 school year. (Alamance-Burlington School System Child Nutrition, 2011) 13.9% or 20,961 Alamance County residents received food stamps in 2010 slightly higher than the state average of 15.4% (Food Nutrition Services, Alamance County, 2010) 16.6% of the Alamance County population lives below poverty, higher than the North Carolina average of 14.6% (U.S. Census Bureau)
91% of students are given free or reduced lunch
91% of students are given free or reduced lunch
ReasoningIf the children in the Tucker St. Community are not able to have basic needs met, they will not attain the fortitude in realizing academic success. Our project plants the seed in meeting the basic needs of the children in the Tucker St. Community so that academic success is a reality. The residents in this neighborhood are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood.” Tucker Street Area Facts: “Neighborhood income lower than 71.7% of U.S.” neighborhoods.“21.6% of the children within neighborhood are below the federal poverty line”“Higher rate of childhood poverty than 70.2% of U.S. neighborhood”
Day of event – space is limitedThis is an excellent opportunity for Pi Omicron Omega to continue the work after May 26th.
