Tour opens students’ eyes to hunger needs in Texas

When five students signed up for a road trip across Texas, they had no idea they’d be beheading roosters on a Waco farm or standing in as last-minute chefs for an absent kitchen crew before a crowd of hungry people.

At a community garden in San Angelo, Bob Knox, director of Rust Street Ministries, tells the Texas at the Table team about the garden. While people of the community have plots in the garden, the residents of the nearby Retirement Village take pride in keeping the garden maintained. Also, 50 percent of everything harvested in the garden goes to Rust Street Ministries, which provides food, clothes, house goods, furniture and other assistance to the poor. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Chelsea Jenkins)

The young women had their share of adventures on the three-week journey, during which they learned about hunger, nutrition, agriculture, public policy and what Texans around the state are doing to help those in need.

Jeremy Everett, director of the Texas Hunger Initiative, and Brenda Sanders, student missions consultant at GoNow Missions, conceived the idea for the Texas at the Table tour. Everett participated in a similar trip 10 years ago when he was in seminary.

“This time around, we realized a lot of kids have heard about hunger in Haiti or Africa, but not domestically. This was a chance to educate them about what’s going on in the state,” he said.

Mallory Homeyer, lead organizer at the Texas Hunger Initiative, planned the trip with stops in Waco, Lubbock, San Angelo, San Antonio, McAllen and Austin.

Students learned about the reasons so many lack access to healthy foods. Financial concerns, transportation issues, improper equipment for food storage and cooking or a simple lack of knowledge about a healthy diet all play a role.

“During the summers, parents will give a lot of kids a dollar or two for lunch,” Everett said. “And they walk to the convenience store and get a candy bar and a Coke, because it’s all they can afford. It makes their hunger pains go away, but they’re incredibly malnourished.”

That explains how hunger and childhood obesity can go hand in hand, something Texas Tech senior Emily Moore said she never understood until she took this trip.

“Even if there is food available, it’s not even worth eating because it’s hurting you even more than it’s providing you nutrients,” Moore said.

Poor families who can get to the grocery store often don’t fare much better. They’re forced to buy cheap, processed foods full of unhealthy ingredients like high fructose corn syrup.

Emily Moore (left), a senior at Texas Tech University, and Brittany Rupp, a sophomore at the University of Texas at Arlington, prepare to serve lunch at Wesley Daily Bread Soup Kitchen at Wesley United Methodist Church in San Angelo. The team prepared and served lunch to more than 100 people during lunch that day.  (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Chelsea Jenkins)

“From growing up in a Walmart generation, I would say I have been completely surprised about how the food that we eat is so unhealthy,” said Chelsea Jenkins, a graduate student at Texas A&M University-Commerce. “And yet, they’re selling it to us each and every day.”

Brittany Rupp, a sophomore at the University of Texas at Arlington, echoed the sentiment.

“I thought that eating a fruit from the store was really healthy,” Rupp said. “I’ve learned a lot more about eating in season for what’s growing in season. And now I’m more interested in buying locally, because not only is the food fresher, but it also helps people in my own community who are trying to make a living by growing things there.”

At the World Hunger Relief Farm in Waco, students learned about alternatives to store-bought, genetically modified and processed food, and they experienced a few days living like farmhands. They set up fencing, harvested crops, collected eggs and cooked meals from scratch.

“I can honestly say that I never expected life on the farm to be this intense,” wrote Howard Payne University junior Dani Clark on the trip blog.

“The explanation for dinner was simple—‘You have everything you need here on the farm, so get to collecting and cooking.’ Easier said than done. Collecting the veggies was easy, and even catching the fast rooster was easy enough. Killing and skinning was a totally different story.”

A guest of Wesley Daily Bread Soup Kitchen in San Angelo enjoys his meal. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Chelsea Jenkins)

They learned about eating fresh food and buying locally through urban gardening, community gardens and farmers’ markets.

“Because of the declining economy and rising food prices, more and more people are taking to growing their own food in their backyards,” said Bethel Erickson, a trip leader and member of the Heart of Texas urban gardening coalition. “And as we go around the state, we’re seeing more food pantries and churches getting in on that activity.”

For anyone interested in learning to grow their own food, Erickson recommends hitting the local library and then going out and digging in.

“Of course, you’ll have your successes and your failures, but I think the best way to learn is by actually just getting your hands dirty,” she said.

More and more farmers markets now accept the Lone Star Card, a Texas governmental food assistance program, which is good news for low-income families who often are forced to sacrifice nutrition for thrift. Community gardens are also a great resource for families in need.

In addition to nutrition, the group learned about different feeding programs, from soup kitchens and food pantries to the Summer Food Service Program for children who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches during the school year.

The Texas Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of Agriculture fund the Summer Food Assistance Program. Local sponsors, such as school districts or food banks, prepare and package meals and deliver them to local feeding sites, like churches, neighborhood parks or schools, for distribution to hungry children.

Moore noted these programs can’t function without volunteers—if no one shows up to help, people will go hungry.

“I always thought: ‘Oh, our church volunteers once a month at the soup kitchen. That’s when I’m going to go do it,’” Moore said. “But they need people—they have to have people every day, or it won’t work.”

The students realized how necessary volunteers are while visiting a San Angelo soup kitchen. In the middle of their tour, when the scheduled cooking team called and said they couldn’t make it.

“Panic spread across most of our faces since we had no idea what we were supposed to do, and none of us had never cooked food for a group of the size we were about to feed,” Clark wrote on the trip blog.

Two hours later, the group served up enchiladas, meat and potatoes, spinach, rolls and spaghetti.

“As the people filed in, we saw young, good-looking people, older folks shuffling in, families with little children and people from all different backgrounds, and not one of them was denied a meal,” Clark wrote. “All of the meals were hot, and every plate was served piled high.”

All the girls talked about their excitement to go home, spread the word and apply what they learned to their lives.

“I think trying to start locally, and trying to help the people at least in your own community—that can make a big difference,” Rupp said.

To read more about Texas at the Table, check out the trip blog at www.texasatthetable.blogspot.com.