Representing my organization at community events is always an enjoyable and enlightening experience. I get to talk with people and find out their perspectives on whatever program or issue we are highlighting that day - be it substance use among young people, exercise for older citizens or healthy eating across the life cycle.

Two weekends ago, I spent most of Sunday afternoon at Coplay Community Days staffing a table with other volunteers to promote the work of Whitehall-Coplay Communities That Care (CTC). We straddled ourselves between the CTC display and information from one of the projects that grew out of the CTC - the Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative.

Hundreds of people had visited our booth that weekend, accepting hand-held fans with the CTC logo, purchasing raffle tickets for a gift basket, making donations of food or money for Coplay Food Bank or simply wanting to learn more about the work of this coalition.

And a few expressed their feelings and opinions. One conversation especially stuck with me.

“What is this all about?” asked one woman, a lifelong resident of the community. I said the CTC is a way to gather everyone with a vested interest in the youth of the community to come together to work on making sure our schools, families and community provides the best environment possible for our kids to be successful in life. Using data to drive our work, we build on the strengths and address challenges that put kids at risk. Our data indicated a high rate of kids saying their families run out of food, and they have skipped meals because of their family not having money to buy food. In 2013, this rate was higher than both the rates in Lehigh County and the state.

As such, the CTC decided we needed to address hunger as a priority. Being hungry is strongly correlated with inability to perform in school. Falling behind in school leads to school failure and other issues like truancy or dropping out, which lead to other problems like criminal involvement and substance abuse. Can you see where this is going? I think this woman did, too, but she had her own views.

“I will never give money to that,” she said, pointing to the Hunger Initiative banner.

I assured her that is her choice, and I respected it. She went on to say parents need to take responsibility and feed their children. I agreed. We shouldn’t need to be feeding other people’s children, she said. I agreed. Parents need to get jobs and buy food for the children instead of driving nice cars and getting their nails done, she said. I could not have agreed more.

She continued: And if you keep feeding these kids, they are never going to grow up and learn you have to work, right? I didn’t agree on this one, but I did manage to get a few words in and hopefully provided some insight.

Hunger is a huge systemic problem. Hunger is so much more complex than simply feeding people. Hunger is about economics. Many of the poor who visit our food banks are people who work and simply cannot make ends meet. Hunger is about policy. Hunger is about accountability. Hunger is about supporting farmers. And yes, hunger is about feeding the hungry.

Communities That Care is all about getting to the root of our challenges. The Hunger Initiative addresses one of the roadblocks to success for youth in this particular community. The work of this group is similar to that of the Red Cross at a fire scene - making sure everyone involved is taken care and has basic needs. From there, the fire investigators, building inspectors, possibly law enforcement and legislators take over to determine causes, hold someone responsible and amend codes or laws. There is work to be done at multiple levels.

The same goes for hunger. While we advocate to our leaders about the needs of children and families, we keep our focus on the front line. Regardless of why they are hungry, the children of this community are all our children and need to be fed.

She never did agree, and that is OK. For every person who had an opinion on why we should not feed children, there were two more who came by and made donations.

While hunger increased slightly between 2013 and 2015, it did so at a rate significantly slower than the rate at the county and state level.

Does feeding the children work? It sure seems like it. Only time will tell.

Editor’s note: Denise Continenza is the family & consumer sciences extension educator with Penn State Extension – Lehigh and Northampton counties.