- Levels of food insecurity have risen generally across Hampton Roads and nationwide, but rural communities like Sussex and Franklin are among those hardest hit.
- There are more than 180,000 people in the region who often don’t know where their next meal will come from, according to ODU's State of the Region report. And that was before the pandemic.
- Tiffany Boyle, Newport News' Commissioner of the Revenue and a 2019 Top 40 Under 40 honoree, created a fundraiser to benefit the Virginia Peninsula Foodbank and Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore,
- “I wouldn’t eat or would drastically cut back,” one Navy spouse said. “I would seek out support for my kids, because there is less stigma with helping children.”
- The Hunton Y uses an aging stove and a couple of refrigerators to prepare two meals a day, plus an afternoon snack, for kids in Tidewater Gardens. It's getting a $25,000 Rotary Club grant to modernize its kitchen.
- Patients with diabetes, hypertension or other diet-related diseases can be screened through a survey that will look for issues with food insecurity.
- Unemployment, housing costs, the price of healthy, nutritious food and persistent poverty are all factors that can lead to hunger and food insecurity. When focusing on ways to address these factors and facilitate economic development in our region, business leaders rarely mention one of the most basic approaches for ensuring individuals have the potential to exist in a thriving economy – guaranteeing they have enough food to eat.
- Recent data presented by Feeding America suggest more than 175,000 individuals in Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore are food-insecure.