Many of us don't go to bed hungry, and it's all too easy to take for granted that we have enough nutritious food to feed our own children. A lot of our kids don't know what it's like to go to school on an empty stomach, which is why we wanted to educate the Hatch kids on what food-insecure households face each and every day and how the average cost to feed a person is $36.50. Through a partnership with Unilever Project Sunlight, we sent the Hatchlings to a local market with this amount of money and instructed them to buy enough groceries to feed a child for a week, balancing their menu with guidelines using the Healthy Eating Plate, comprised of the four food groups.
Hatch: Hunger
Even the youngest kids are capable of understanding that selecting nutrient-rich foods on a limited budget can be a difficult task and that we all need to do our part to make sure no child goes to bed with an empty stomach. As the Hatchling says in the video: "Don't use the word 'starving' lightly, because there's a lot of people who are actually starving." The following activity can be done at a local grocery store with your own children or with students to help showcase the difficult choices people have to make due to budget and to empower these kids to make a positive impact on their community by sharing a meal.
Parents can download this activity PDF to do this activity with their own kids.
Launched in November of 2013, Unilever Project Sunlight is a sustainable initiative focused on encouraging people to create a brighter future for our children. Unilever Project Sunlight believes that even the smallest act — whether it's sharing a meal, donating time or money or volunteering — can make a difference when multiplied over time and can help build a brighter future for children. Go to ProjectSunlight.us to learn more about how to share a meal to end child hunger, or join the conversation on Twitter using #ShareAMeal.
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