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…

Yesterday, the IRS released a statement indicating that there are more than $1.3 billion in unclaimed federal tax refunds for people who did not file for 2006. This includes approximately 37,000 filers in Washington state! If you are one of those people, you need to file your 2006 return by April 15, 2010, or you lose that refund…

Our sites can help!  Don’t miss out on your money!!

[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 —…

Note: This piece was originally published in the Seattle P-I five years ago. Unfortunately, the GAU program is on the chopping block again. The arguments put forth by United Way CEO Jon Fine and United Way board member Dan Brettler are still true today and powerful reasons to preserve GAU. Take action to save GAU by contacting your senator. More info is at the bottom of the post.

Darren Branning lived under a bridge in Renton and did his best to stay as far away from…

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…

Many of you have heard me talk about “permanent supportive housing” in previous posts.  Washington state’s Housing Trust Fund is the essential tool for the creation and preservation of permanent supportive housing. In order to keep up with the community need, an additional $100 million in funding should be added to the Housing Trust Fund. More than 70 percent of people served by the Fund make less than $17,540 per year, making it a vital resource in the fight to end homelessness.

Funding the Housing Trust Fund now with $100 million would allow Washington…

The Times profiles two families and their encounters with scarce food and limited budgets during United Way’s Hunger Action Week. The piece does a great job conveying what it’s like for a family for whom a food stamps-budget is a constant reality.

One of the main issues facing local food banks and the clients who rely on them is a lack of fresh produce. Commonly donated items tend to be canned and dry goods, which are great, but don’t make for a very well rounded diet.

Fortunately, there are numerous ways to help stock food banks with healthy, fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables. Programs such as Solid Ground’s Lettuce Link aim to improve access to fresh produce to low-income individuals in Seattle. Lettuce Link coordinates with local P-Patch…

This is a post written last year but it’s applicable to this year’s Hunger Action Week and I’ve added more details and statistics to it

[In Washington, there was a 56% increase from 2007 to 2009 of people relying solely on food stamps]

While our Hunger Challenge is specifically and intentionally not a “food stamp challenge”, it is very closely related – for example, the reason we chose $7 a day is because it is the maximum benefits a Washington resident can get from food benefits. For…