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Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week

This week is an annual program where people come together from across the country to draw attention to the problems of hunger and homelessness through education, service, fundraising, and advocacy.

Introduction

                  
Image Credit: Hunger and Homelessness Awareness 

 

National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week (HHAW) is held each year the week before Thanksgiving. In San Diego Mesa College and Nationally, the week of November 14th - 18th seeks to bring together different campus units and student organizations to create awareness around housing and food insecurity in our country.

Housing and food insecurity is a serious and important phenomenon impacting approximately 43.1 million people in America alone! It is important to recognize how the members of our own communities are affected by these hardships,  This resource guide is a work in progress and we will be happy to get your valuable feedback on how to improve this guide and the resources provided.

 

Defining Hunger and Food Insecurity

 

Image Credit: Hunger and Homelessness Awareness 

 

The CNSTAT ( Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), an arm of the National Research Council (a body of the National Academies) panel  recommended that USDA make a clear and explicit distinction between food insecurity and hunger:

  • Food insecurity—the condition assessed in the food security survey and represented in USDA food security reports—is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.
  • Hunger is an individual-level physiological condition that may result from food insecurity.

The word "hunger," the panel stated in its final report, "...should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation." Measuring hunger in this sense would require collecting more detailed and extensive information on the physiological experiences of individual household members than could be accomplished effectively in the Current Population Survey (CPS). The panel recommended, therefore, that new methods be developed to measure hunger and that a national assessment of hunger is conducted using an appropriate survey of individuals rather than a survey of households.

The Stand (San Diego Mesa College)

 

 San Diego Mesa College’s food and clothing pantry has been successful in both collecting donations and helping students on campus. Find out more by clicking on this link. The STAND also partners with Feeding San Diego and San Diego Food Bank to help with food Insecurity in the College Community. 

  

Mesa Library Resources

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San Diego Mesa College Library currently has:

​Students receive research support through:

Resources are accessed through the library’s website at www.sdmesa.edu/library