toledoblade.com --

Simulating a reality that many face everyday, Toledo media, including journalists at The Blade, will learn if $23 a week provides enough food to get them through the week nutritiously.

The Food Stamp Challenge is organized by the Lucas County Hunger Task Force and Toledo Area Ministries.

Other challenges have been held across the country for public officials, journalists, hunger advocates, and others.

During the event, which kicks off today and runs through Nov. 23, participants must try to make ends meet using the average amount of money a food stamp recipient receives, or about $23 per person per week, said the Rev. Steve Anthony, executive director of Toledo Area Ministries.

Per person, that works out to about $1.09 per meal or about $3.28 per day.

More than 1.1 million people in Ohio receive food stamps, 72,932 of them in Lucas County, according to the state and Lucas County departments of Job and Family Services.

The challenge, The Rev. Anthony explained, is "to create empathy and show why there is this greater need for food pantries and soup kitchens."

Toledo Area Ministries' Feed Your Neighbor program fed 62,000 people last year.

With the economic crisis and rising food costs, the group is anticipating feeding about 75,000 this year at the 14 Feed Your Neighbor sites.

"We know that low-income individuals and low-income families - they're not making it," added Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks. "They are turning more frequently to food pantries and soup kitchens to supplement [their diets]."

Ms. Hamler-Fugitt's group is working to ask Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and other elected officials to take the challenge as well.

"We want him to understand what nearly 1.2 million Ohioans go through every day," she said. "They struggle daily with trying to stretch those food stamps."

According to surveys by her organization, most food stamp recipients' monthly allotment lasts about two weeks, she said.

The name of the food stamp program recently changed to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, nationally and the Food Assistance Program in Ohio.

The name changed in part because the program no longer uses stamps and gives recipients electronic debit cards. The new name is to reflect the program.

"It's not a welfare program," said Lawrence Rudmann, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the assistance. "It's a nutrition program. And the word food stamps has such a negative connotation."

Last year, the three Lucas County commissioners accepted the challenge.

"I thought it was an excellent opportunity to bring awareness to how few dollars this really is to feed an entire family, and how limiting the choices were," said Commissioner Tina Skeldon Wozniak, who said she mainly subsisted on starchy foods like pasta.

"There were days that you were hungry," she added.

In Lucas County, the number of food assistance recipients has continued to grow steadily - 72,932 received the assistance in October, up from 71,766 a month earlier, according to the county's Department of Job and Family Services.

Recipients cannot make more than 130 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify for the program. The amount of money a family receives depends on income, number of dependents, and many other factors.

Critics of the challenge have said that it does not accurately reflect the amount of money some food stamp recipients receive and that the program is intended to be a supplement, not a family's entire food budget.

Deb Ortiz-Flores, director of Lucas County Job and Family Services, said while food stamps are intended to be a supplement, they often serve as more.

"That is more and more evident these days - that is all [some people] have available for food," she said. "That is why we have seen the increase at the food pantries."

The Rev. Anthony added that buying nutritious food such as fresh produce and whole grains is especially challenging with a limited budget.

"The challenge is not just to not be hungry," he said. "The challenge is, can I eat well, and healthy?"

Added Ms. Hamler-Fugitt, "You're going to find very quickly that $23 is not going to stretch very far."

Contact Kate Giammarise at:
kgiammarise@theblade.com
or 419-724-6133.

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