Photo exhibit shows challenges of hunger

Women Ending Hunger, a volunteer group from the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, partnered with the University of Rhode Island to present a Witness to Hunger photo exhibition in the front lobby of the Robert L. Carothers Library and Learning Commons.

Director of Communications at the Rhode Island Community Food Bank Cindy Elder said the exhibit was inspired by the national initiative Witnesses To Hunger, a project in which low-income mothers and their children take photos of the issues most important to them.

The Women Ending Hunger group meets several times a year to work on policy changes, community outreach, hunger awareness and improving the food stamp program in Rhode Island.

"We felt that we could give voice to the issue and allow Rhode Island mothers to take part,"said. Elder "We want to give a sense of the reality of the issues to people and show them that hunger is very local people just like you and me deal with food insecurity."

For the exhibit, the food bank found four women in the state who took pictures of the challenges they have trying to feed their families.

"Hunger [for these women] is a struggle to feed their families on a daily basis. Daily becomes weekly, weekly becomes monthly and soon it becomes years of hunger."

The exhibit is designed to show viewers how this problem affects Rhode Island and how it is a real struggle many people deal with.

"There have been times when there wasn't enough food for me, my husband and my kids; I don't tell them, I just act like I eat," a woman named Marie W said in one passage in the exhibit. "I make especially sure my kids eat, and I make sure my husband eats because I know he works. We've had times when there was no food...you open the cabinet: nothing."

According to the latest press release from the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, throughout the last four years, the number of people being served at emergency food pantries has risen 58 percent. There are at least 60,000 people being served meals at 100 food pantries across the state.

The report also indicates that there are 181,000 Rhode Islanders living in households with incomes below 130 percent of the federal poverty level – the level that qualifies children for free school meals.