Friday I called Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee, headquartered in Gray, to see if I could drill down further to statistics specific to Kingsport. I talked to Quinne Bryant in development and she was kind and helpful. Amid much chaos on my end (you know how kids are happily entertaining themselves till the moment when you pick up the phone?), I managed to get a bit closer to what hunger looks like in numbers, at least in our area.
In Sullivan County, 14.1% of the population lives below the poverty level. This is low for our area, which consists of an eight-county group that makes up Northeast Tennessee. Together in these eight counties, 15.7% live below the poverty level. (This data is from 2009, the most recent year it's available, per Ms. Bryant. The established levels I've linked to, however, are for 2011.)
Per the Tennessee State Report Card for 2010, 50.2% of all students classified as economically disadvantaged are eligible for federal reduced and free lunch program. In Sullivan County, this equals 3,255 students in grades K through 12.
According to the Food Research and Action Center, which is a leading national nonprofit organization "working to improve public policy and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the U.S.," there are 22 states in which 1/4 or more of the households reported food hardship. Tennessee is one of those states.
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