This Thanksgiving, prioritize nutrition assistance to ensure no child goes hungry: Kimberly LoVano - cleveland.com

Guest columnist Kimberly LoVano currently serves as director of advocacy and public education at the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, where she has been a team member for the past nine years.

For many of us, Thanksgiving is a time to share a meal with family and reflect on all we are grateful for. However, there is no denying that this year feels different.

Over the past year and a half, many families, friends and neighbors have experienced unprecedented levels of hardship, grief and instability as the pandemic devastated our everyday reality.

At the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, we saw this hardship firsthand. Between October 2020 and September 2021, nearly one in five residents from our six-county service area turned to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank and our network of more than 1,000 programmatic partners for help keeping food on the table.

We saw our neighbors from every situation, including those who had never turned to an emergency food program before the pandemic. In fact, about 25 percent of our neighbors visited a hunger relief program for the very first time last year.

And while the impact is visible to anyone driving past the long line of cars at the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Lot on a Thursday afternoon, the work of our programmatic partners --from the Boys & Girls Clubs on Northeast Ohio to church-run neighborhood pantries -- is less visible, but equally important.

The folks who run these programs -- many of them volunteers -- are unsung everyday heroes.

For the general public, it may be even harder to see the critical impact that federal poverty and hunger-alleviation programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), have on our shared communities.

Those blessed with enough resources may not be aware of the 279,000 Northeast Ohioans who rely on SNAP to keep nutritious food on the table, or the thousands of families with children who have received a boost to their budgets thanks to an expansion of the Child Tax Credit.

These two programs, along with federal stimulus payments and enhanced unemployment benefits, have had an incredible impact on families.

According to an analysis from the Urban Institute, these pandemic-related supports, coupled with existing programs, will keep nearly 50 million Americans out of poverty in 2021. That includes a staggering 17 million children.

This was no small feat. Policy change of this magnitude took an immense amount of advocacy and political will. And looking ahead, it will take even more effort to ensure these supports do not simply slip away.

But this Herculean effort will be worth it if it means lifting 17 million children out of poverty. In fact, our only question should be: What can we do to keep every one of these children out of poverty next year -- and each year after that?

As our federal, state and local lawmakers work to rebuild and recover from the effects of the pandemic, we urge them to prioritize proven policies that will continue to lift our nation’s children out of poverty.

It is up to each of us to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry -- and that every child has access to a brighter future.

Readers are invited to submit Opinion page essays on topics of regional or general interest. Send your 500-word essay for consideration to Ann Norman at anorman@cleveland.com. Essays must include a brief bio and headshot of the writer. Essays rebutting today’s topics are also welcome.

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This Thanksgiving, prioritize nutrition assistance to ensure no child goes hungry: Kimberly LoVano - cleveland.com
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