Thank you for participating in our Food Stamp Challenge in honor of Community Action Month! Please check out the other pages of this blog for various tips and resources. While living on a food stamp budget for a week cannot come close to the struggles encountered by low-income families week after week and month after month, we hope that you find it to be a meaningful experience and it helps you gain a better understanding of what life is like for the 1.75 million low-income Ohioans living on food stamps.
The Food Stamp Program was established in 1939 and has helped more than 26 million low-income people across the country purchase needed food each month. The program encourages people to transition from welfare to work by supplementing their food budgets and gradually decreasing benefits as income increases. The food stamp program plays a vital role in providing nutrition assistance to low-income families, but the current benefit level makes it very difficult for many recipients to make ends meet. After paying for housing, energy and healthcare expenses, many low-income households have little or no money remaining to spend on food without food stamp benefits. Additionally, most food stamp households report that their food stamp benefits do not last the entire month and many are forced to turn to food pantries and soup kitchens.
We want to know how you do during the Challenge. Was it enough money to get you through the week? Were you tempted to cheat? How different was your shopping experience? Did it affect the way or time it takes you to prepare meals? Did it change your perceptions of food stamp recipients? Share your thoughts by posting to this blog. You can do so by typing up your thoughts and emailing them to info@oacaa.org.
Good luck with the Challenge!
