Kids Can LEAP Into Action to Fight Food Insecurity

This article introduces a plan of action for kids and adults to fight food insecurity using the acronym LEAP: learn, empathize, act, and persist. Each step includes background and practical suggestions to guide readers. This article also includes a free resource for educators and parents to further empower kids as they take on food insecurity. 

Learn, Empathize, Act, and Persist against Food Insecurity

Food insecurity occurs when a family doesn’t always have enough healthy food for the whole month. It is a situation that can lead people to feel disempowered. When children are put in this situation, they feel even less able than adults to do something to change it. 

There are things kids can do, though, to help themselves, classmates, or friends who may be hungry. To do so, they need to take a “LEAP.” LEAP, which stands for Learn, Empathize, Act, Persist, reminds us of what kids can do to act against hunger.

In this video, watch nine-year-old hunger advocate Mia describe in her own words the challenge of food insecurity and ways that children can take the LEAP to beat the Hunger Monster™ featured in my children’s book about food insecurity, Lulu and the Hunger Monster.

Let’s dig a little deeper into what children and the adults in their lives can do to make the most of these responses and take this LEAP to learn, empathize, act, and persist against food insecurity.  

Learn

It’s hard for a child or an adult to help with a problem if they don’t first understand a little about the issues. Children can be encouraged to ask tough questions like, Why do adults and the government allow there to be hungry kids in America, even though there’s plenty of food around? The very youngest children need to be protected from such consideration, but as children reach the age of six and beyond, they can be encouraged to look at the outside world in a more critical and constructive way.

Even though hunger is often an invisible problem, there is plenty of information available about the challenging truth of it. You can direct children to resources such as Feeding America and No Kid Hungry, national organizations with helpful websites that focus on issues and stories related to childhood hunger, or explore these sites with them. The stories are particularly important, because statistics can be meaningless for children who might struggle to place them in a personal context. It is a good idea for young children to remember one number: one kid in seven is hungry in America. They can look around at how many people are in their classroom and imagine that.

Empathize

This is really the crux of the matter. Food-insecure kids need understanding almost as much as they need food. Hunger is a socially complex issue. Unlike classic medical conditions, childhood food insecurity carries a significant stigma. When kids realize that embarrassment and awkwardness create additional problems on top of the physical symptoms of hunger, that awareness, and the empathy it brings, can lead to powerful social and emotional learning.

It can help to get children to imagine times when they had a problem and someone helped them. Did they feel awkward and like they were “not enough”? Kids can also write little scenes imagining what problems they would have if they were hungry. You can introduce the concept of feeling tired or cranky when you are hungry and use kids’ understanding of those feelings to begin laying the groundwork for empathizing with someone who may have no choice but to be hungry.

Act

This is the meat in the sandwich—the chance for children to help others. They might help their own friends or neighbors, in which case they need to act or share food in a neutral way without embarrassing the other person.

Once you’re helping the people you know, you can begin to cast a wider net to help everyone in your town. 

A class can organize a food drive to collect healthy food to give to a local food bank. A garden can be started at home or at school to grow more healthy food for people. Families can volunteer at food pantries. When students volunteer with their parents and caregivers, it helps broaden their awareness beyond the home or classroom and offers a chance for valuable family engagement. Kids get to see the results of their actions.

Persist

Persistence pays, so goes the old motto. It is certainly the only thing that will truly eradicate the underlying causes of food insecurity at the community level. We all want our children to be thoughtful and caring members of society, but we don’t need to wait for them to grow up. There are lots of things kids can do now. I’m always inspired by this quote attributed to Anne Frank, a girl who had a lot to contend with but still found the strength to issue this rallying cry.

“Hunger is not a problem. It is an obscenity. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

One in seven students is food insecure. Provide all children with information and opportunities to take a LEAP—learning, empathizing, acting, and persisting—to fight food insecurity, whether they need assistance or can benefit from building empathy and awareness around this universal issue.