May 22, 2009

Beyond Bread: Nutrition and Rising Homelessness

~Sharon Gruber, our blogging Nutrition Consultant, has been on a spring holiday at the Sustainable Food blog at change.org, producing all sorts of discussions over the Series of Tubes. The subject of her posts are Bread for the City’s Nutrition Initiative--an ongoing effort to improve the health of our community.  One of our major efforts has been providing healthy food including fresh produce to all the low-income residents who utilize our food pantry. A series of cooking classes called Fit for Fun, a Health Peer Education Program, gleaning trips to local farms, and one-on-one nutrition consultations came out of this initiative as well.


~Kathryn Baer let us know about a report published last week by the Homeless Services Planning and Coordinating Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The report states that the number of officially homeless people in the greater Washington area has increased over the past year by 2.4%. Of the 12, 035 people who are reported as “literally homeless” in greater Washington, 6,228 are living in DC. Also important is this statistic: “Twenty-one (21) percent of these persons report severe mental illness; 23 percent have a chronic health problem and 15 percent are physically disabled.” There are currently 1,426 homeless children in DC, up 24% over last year.

~DCPCA’s CEO (and friend of Bread for the City) Sharon Baskerville was honored with the 2009 Community Achievement Award this week by DC Appleseed.

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