When I present sessions, I like to begin by using opening activities that show commonality among participants and allow space for relationships to grow. One such activity is a simple invitation for participants to share a recipe for cooking either beans or rice. Beans and rice are some of the most common foods on the planet and used in a variety of dishes in many different cultures. Beans and rice are so widely recognized and readily available it’s easy to forget they are often a primary food source. For just one moment, imagine you are the caregiver of a family who has juggled competing interests, figured out transportation, time, and energy obstacles to attend story time at the public library. The stay-and-play activity after storytime involves playing in enough rice to feed everyone in the room. It’s not a choking hazard, it engages the senses, it’s relatively inexpensive, and it…
Tag: food insecurity
Back to school help for Students
To extend our reach and eliminate any barriers to service, we have partnered with our county school system to provide student accounts. Students can use their school account number as a library card, granting them access to print and online library materials. After a year and a half of virtual school, students are back to in-person learning. Do they have all the materials they need to succeed?
Libraries Partner with Community Agencies to Help Fight Food Insecurity
The Realities of Food Insecurity Food insecurity is a growing problem across the nation. Food security is a federal measure of a household’s ability to provide enough food for every person in the household to have an active, healthy life. Food insecurity is one way to measure the risk of hunger. Currently in the United States, 1 in 8 people struggle with hunger.[1] Food insecurity can cause individuals and families to make extremely difficult choices between buying food and paying bills. These choices can affect the ability of children to learn and grow, the ability of seniors to seek critical healthcare, and can cause health complications for people of all ages. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 41.2 million people lived in food- insecure households in 2016. 8 million adults lived in households with very little food security and 6.5 million children lived in food-insecure households.[2] This problem…
Make the Case to Serve Meals @ Your Library
If you haven’t dipped your toe into serving meals at your library already, now is the perfect time to do it! In June, Amy Koester blogged about Combating Summer Food Insecurity at the Library but it might have been too late for you to put things into place for this past summer. Never fear, here are some tips to getting started with your planning for Summer 2017!
Combatting Summer Food Insecurity at the Library
If you work in a public library, you’re probably familiar with statistics about how many children in your service area qualify for free and reduced-price meals at your area schools. Nationwide, that number is around 21.5 million children*. But what happens in the summer, when the majority of children aren’t going to the school where they receive this lunch? According to data gathered by Feeding America*, as many as 18.8 million of those children do not have access to nutritional support during the summer. In many cases, that means these children are at high risk for food insecurity and missing meals altogether. Libraries are increasingly stepping in to combat summer food insecurity in their communities. Many libraries work with established organizations to serve as a summer lunch site–an approved site for distributing nutritional meals to youth during the summer. Different libraries have aimed to adopt this approach in ways that meet…