Category: News Room

23% of Shelby County’s population faces hunger issues

June was Hunger Awareness Month and leaders from several Shelby County towns and area agencies serving under-served populations used the opportunity to remind the public that going hungry is a very real issue in Shelby County.

Sherry Harding, director of Shelby County Outreach Ministries, said the entity has been serving residents of the county for 22 years with a mission of feeding the hungry and assisting the poor.

“Statistics show that 23.1 percent of people in Shelby County struggle with food insecurity,” she said. “This means that individuals and families do not have enough food.”
(Read more from Light & Champion)

Several organizations seek to learn about senior nutrition in East Texas

A public meeting to discuss the future of a senior nutrition program serving people in 14 East Texas counties drew interest from several different organizations.

The East Texas Council of Governments-Area Agency on Aging held the meeting Tuesday at its headquarters in Kilgore. More than a dozen people attended, including potential bidders on the agency’s senior nutrition contract.
(Read more from Longview News-Journal)

Tyler Junior League Supports East TX Foodbank Summer Backpack Program

About 1 in 5 Adults in East Texas are deemed “food insecure”.  That means they simply don’t have enough to eat.  And that number is even higher for children.

Thankfully there are school lunch programs during the year to at least provide one good nutritious meal during the week while the kids are in school.  But when the summer break comes and school isn’t in session, many children can go hungry.
(Read and listen to this story from Redriverradio.org)

East Texas Food Bank, Junior League of Tyler partner for annual Summer Backpack Program

Maudesta Moore said she had spent most of her summer watching the shows her grandbabies wanted to watch when she decided to turn on the morning news and saw that the East Texas Food Bank would be kicking off its annual Summer Backpack Program.

Moore said she was planning to take them to Bergfeld Park anyway, so she decided to make a day of it and skip a trip to McDonald’s after. With three granddaughters and one great-granddaughter in tow, she headed to Bergfeld Park to let the children play while she learned more about the program.
(Read more from Tyler Paper)

East Texas Food Bank kicks off summer backpack program

For the fifth year, kids in Tyler will have food for the weekends throughout the summer thanks to a summer backpack program.

While the East Texas Food Bank’s Summer Feeding Program covers kids Monday through Friday, their annual backpack program provides kids with food for the weekend.

“You can imagine, obviously you’re still hungry during the weekend, they’re really filling that meal gap for a lot of these kids by providing that food,” said Tim Butler, the program services director at East Texas Food Bank.
(Read and watch this story from KLTV)