Local 4th Grader Teaches Class about Food Insecurity

Nate Hyson, pictured above with his mother, Sarah Hyson, and with his principal Dr. Dina Wert and fourth grade teacher Mrs. Nancy Kimball, founded Baby Food Fund when he was six-years-old. He was aware that people were hungry, and he wanted to help. He created his own donation box and collected $30. Nate then had to narrow down who he would help. He chose babies for three reasons: he thinks babies are really cute; he wanted to help people who could not help themselves; and he believes that everyone deserves an equal start in life.

Four years later, Nate has a partnership with the Chester County Food Bank. He has delivered more than 1200 pounds of baby food to their warehouse for distribution around Chester County. Nate runs fundraisers, benefits from the Share the Plate program at the Unitarian Congregation of West Chester, sets up a booth at local events like Caln Community Day and West Bradford Day, and runs an annual food drive at West Bradford Elementary School. He is now the recipient of a 2018 Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation Youth Grant, in partnership with Youth Service America.

This grant, and Global Youth Service Day, sparked the idea for Nate to teach his class about food insecurity in Chester County, and get them more involved in this year's food drive. Nate gave them background on what food insecurity is, informed his class that food insecurity impacts people living both below and above the poverty line (see this chart to learn more), and led them in some math lessons to find an estimate of how many babies are born into food insecure households each year (this information was not readily available).

What did they discover? The class determined that:

• Approximately 660 babies are born every year into food insecure households in Chester County.
• It would take more than 120,000 pounds of baby food each year to eliminate food insecurity for babies in Chester County.

The students were astonished that in the wealthiest county of Pennsylvania, so many people need their help. As one student said, "If we're the wealthiest county, it should be easy to feed all these people." The students came out of the lesson determined to make this year's food drive more successful than any of the previous Baby Food Fund food drives.

You can help fight food insecurity in Chester County. Baby Food Fund takes donations on its website. You can also follow Baby Food Fund on Facebook and learn where Nate will be setting up a booth and taking donations.