How to help some of NC’s federally-supported programs that feed the hungry
Confusion over whether the Trump administration would halt federal financial support of programs including Meals on Wheels on Wednesday, Jan. 29, has brought attention to hunger across the country and in North Carolina in particular.
While the state has become more urban in recent decades, most of North Carolina’s counties are still rural and hunger is a more prevalent problem in rural areas where resources are more scarce.
In 2022, nearly 1.5 million people in North Carolina didn’t have enough to eat, making the state the 10th-hungriest in the nation, according to Inter-Faith Food Shuttle of Raleigh.
Meals on Wheels focuses primarily on providing food for people with disabilities and those aged 60 years and older and already is underfunded, the agency says. It’s unable to meet the existing need with private donations and public funding.
Meals on Wheels has about 60 member agencies across North Carolina, including one in Wake County that serves about 1,400 homebound clients each week, according to a story by Spectrum News.
But food insecurity affects more than just elderly and disabled populations. In 2022, 14% of the state’s population experienced food insecurity, meaning they didn’t have reliable access to safe, nutritious food, according to FeedingAmerica.org. The organization says 45% of those people earn too much to qualify for benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.
Children as a whole suffer disproportionately from hunger, as do Black, Hispanic and Native American people, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
If you or someone you know needs SNAP or WIC (Women, Infants and Children) benefits, check eligibility on the programs’ websites and apply. In North Carolina in 2019, only 85% of those eligible for SNAP and 54% of those eligible for WIC benefits received them, according to the Duke Sanford Center for Child & Family Policy.
How to reduce food insecurity in North Carolina
▪ Donate to Meals on Wheels at the national or local level, or volunteer with the organization to deliver meals or serve at one of its Friendship Cafes where seniors gather to eat.
▪ Give cash or food to Inter-Faith Food Shuttle in Raleigh, or conduct a food drive for the agency.
▪ Give food or cash to the Food Bank of Eastern and Central North Carolina, which distributes food to local food banks across the region.
▪ Help stock the food pantries at Urban Ministries of Wake County, or any of more than six dozen others across Wake County listed here by the Capital Area Food Network. These include faith-based and community organizations. Three serve local universities.
▪ Give to the Junior League of Raleigh’s BackPack Buddies, or any other BackPack Buddies program. These provide weekend snacks and meals for school-aged children in a backpack they can take home from school and bring back to be refilled.
▪ Donate to a Wake County school’s “angel fund,” which provides money for unpaid balances on school lunches. A News & Observer story in August 2024 said that at that time, 50 schools in the system had no angel fund, and 40 to 50 other schools had less than $25 in their fund.
Parents of students in Wake County schools and donate through a form on the WCPSS website The public can donate by calling Child Nutrition at 919-856-2918.
This story was originally published January 29, 2025 at 4:13 PM with the headline "How to help some of NC’s federally-supported programs that feed the hungry."
