The folks at Stamp Out Hunger are getting an early start to their food collecting this year thanks to the help of Campbell’s Soup.  If you join Stamp Out Hunger’s Facebook fan page, Campbell’s will donate 1 can of soup ( up to 1 million pounds!) to Feeding America.

Stamp Out Hunger is one-day event where the postal service collects food left by mailboxes and delivers it to Feeding America.  Last year, they collected a record 73.4 million pounds of food for the hungry.  It’s a really cool…

[Image from LA Eastide]

Did you know that in L.A. County, certain “restaurants” accept food stamps? It is part of their Restaurant Meals Program that has been running since 2005.

For those that don’t know, food stamps (aka EBT) is generally only allowed for food products that must be prepared. So allowing benefits to be used at restaurants is a pretty radical shift in the program’s scope.

I put the word “restaurants” in quotation marks above because the participating restaurants in the program are almost all fast food chains —…

First Lady Michelle Obama is taking on the challenge of childhood obesity through her Let’s Move campaign.

As a result, One of the key issues that she is addressing is “food deserts”, as seen in the video embedded above.  According to Mrs. Obama, they’re going to be investing $400 million a year to eliminate food desserts in America.

Food deserts, as you may know, are areas in low-income communities where healthy, affordable foods are not easily accessible.  This leads to families eating high-fat and unhealthy food because they…

What Is Affordable Housing? from the Center for Urban Pedagogy on Vimeo.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit that uses design and art to improve the quality of public participation in urban planning and community design, created a great video and website that explains what the term “affordable housing” means.

For those of you who didn’t already know, the government defines affordable housing as housing that costs no more than 30% of your income.

The video goes on to discuss the implications of affordable housing has on low-income families…

United Way of King County’s free Lunch & Learn series connects you with experts on the issues you care about most. Bring your lunch and join us for these fun and engaging one-hour information sessions on a variety of topics.

All sessions will be held at United Way of King County’s downtown Seattle building located at 720 Second Avenue between Cherry and Columbia Streets. Click here for a location map.

(A group of us volunteering at Food Lifeline for MLK 2010)

Hunger Action Week has been over for almost a week now but we still have a few last minute items to take care of!  So here goes:

One last recap:

(Gluten-Free Girl’s recipe for homemade mayonnaise)

Well, Hunger Action Week is officially over!  We think it was another successful campaign that helped bring hunger to the forefront of many people’s minds.  Near 500 of you signed up to be a part of the campaign, over $1,000 was raised, and through  everyone’s conversations — bloggers, commenters, media, conversations — thousands of people recognized the importance of hunger and going without.  I want to send out a huge THANK YOU to everyone who took part in making a…

[Eric Rivera's Cooking Blog's Potato and Leek Chicken Stock Soup]

While today is the official last day of Hunger Action Week, we are going to go over how everyone’s Thursday went!

Hunger Fact:

Blogger Round-up:

[A number of people at the United Way offices are taking the Hunger Challenge this week. The Murray family (mom, dad, and two kids) will be guest-blogging about their experience here. Today, we hear Peter Murray's perspective.]

Day 4 of the Hunger Challenge is nearly in the books, and my thoughts today have turned mainly to my health. As an insulin-dependent diabetic (I inject five times per day), this week has presented a unique set of…well, challenges beyond just trying not to think about being hungry.…

As part of Hunger Action Week, United Way is raising money for a cool project that will save food that normally would go to waste, bring more food to the emergency food system, and leverage tons more money than the project actually costs.

The project is called Yes We Can!

Here’s the basic concept: a local cannery in South King County will donate the facilities two days a week for local emergency food providers. With this time, we will take excess foods that would normally be wasted and…