Forget about overcrowded soup kitchens and #GivingTuesday. In Philadelphia, need goes well beyond just holiday charity.
As we all should know by now, with 26 percent of our population living in poverty, we are the poorest big city in America, and the only city in this country that is getting poorer. Last week we learned another hard truth: unlike in the rest of the country, more Philadelphians are also hungry. Over 300,000 Philadelphians experienced hunger from 2015 to 2017, around 18 percent of the city’s population.
It is shocking to think about. And it is not something solvable through simple acts of charity or kindness. It takes leadership, jobs, education, jobs and a coming together of Philadelphians around a common purpose—lifting all boats, so our city is the best that it can be.
As we head into Thanksgiving and the holidays, it’s a good time to consider what we all can do to relieve the effects of poverty for some of the 400,000 residents living below the poverty line in Philly, now and into the next year. After all, as Samantha Retamar, the Communications Coordinator for hunger-fighting agency Philabundance, says: “Hunger doesn’t take a holiday.”
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
