About Us

In 1988 IHC was established as a statewide membership organization to
develop collaborative relationships to eliminate hunger in communities
throughout Illinois. In 2003, IHC opened an office in Mt. Vernon to organize in
southern Illinois where poverty is persistent and unemployment rates soar
above the national average. In 2004, the Illinois Hunger Coalition (IHC)
continued community organizing and crafting local, state and federal policies
promoting economic and racial justice to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Through our leadership development, IHC organized low-income communities
to develop strategies to promote social justice and ultimately eliminate hunger
by addressing the underlying causes. IHC provided assistance to over 5,000
households throughout the state, through our toll-free Hunger Hotline in both
English and Spanish.
There are close to 400,000 people in Illinois who are hungry and 1.4 million
without regular access to enough food to feed their families. At the same time,
Illinois forgoes $471 million per year in federal dollars for nutrition programs
for children and families by not establishing programs or enrolling all those who
are eligible. If all of those who are eligible received food stamps there would
be an additional $35 million per month coming into Illinois from the federal
government. According to USDA, every food stamp dollar generates two
dollars in local economies because of increased food sales. Illinois is 48th in the
nation for providing the School Breakfast Program to low-income children, less
than a third of those children who participate in free and reduced-price lunch
receive breakfast. By not feeding close to 500,000 children who are eligible for
free and reduced-price school breakfast we hurt our children and we turn our
back on much needed revenue. If Illinois schools provided breakfast to half of
those children who are eligible, an additional $37 million in federal revenues
would come into the state. Only one in five children who participated in the
National School Lunch Program also participated in the Summer Food Service
Program. Close to $6.9 million in federal funds would be realized if 40 children
participated in this program for every 100 who are eligible.
Over the last year, IHC secured several victories in the battle to end hunger.
Due to statewide outreach, between August 2003 and August 2004, more than
51,000 households began participating in the Food Stamp Program. In
Northeast Illinois alone, every month an average of $70 million in food stamp
dollars is utilized by low-income people. Food stamp dollars turn over twice in
the local economy resulting in an additional $140 million in federal revenue for
those communities. In Chicago land, IHC organizes Anti-Hunger Action (AHA)
comprised of forty community-based organizations representing diverse low income
communities. During the past year, leaders from AHA met regularly
with IDHS Secretary, Dr. Carol Adams. As a result, AHA and IDHS agreed to
work collaboratively with local IDHS offices covering Englewood, Back of the
Yards, South Suburban, DuPage, Michigan and Hoffman Estates (northwest
suburbs of Cook County) areas.This work is done through Community Quality
Councils (CQC’s). IHC convenes CQC’s as a deliberate effort to create a
collaborative structure to address poverty and build relations between IDHS
and community members. Low-income individuals from the community,
community organizations, and IDHS staff and management are able to meet
and work together to increase the number of people receiving assistance in the
face of shrinking staff and state budget cuts. Immigrants have faced the greatest
difficulty in accessing services and CQC’s have brought to light their critical
issues. Staff shortages at local offices are at an all time high resulting in illegal
denial of benefits and cut-offs placing consumers, IDHS staff and management
in untenable positions. Some IDHS workers at local offices serve over 1,200
households at any given time, and bi-lingual workers serve even greater
numbers. IHC has been meeting with legislators and the Governors office
about the immediate need for more staff and the deleterious impact of an
overwhelmed system on low-income communities, as well as, the critical loss of
federal dollars.
IHC successfully persuaded the Illinois State Board of Education to permit
family day care providers to receive federal reimbursement for meals served to
an estimated 35,000 low-income children. Once this program is fully utilized,
an estimated $66 million will be available from the federal government to feed
low-income children in family day care homes in Illinois.
IHC organized a statewide campaign to pass legislation to increase the number
of schools offering the School Breakfast Program (SBP). Because of the efforts
of IHC’s grassroots membership, the Childhood Hunger Relief Act (SB1400)
passed the Senate and the House. However, due to a technical change in the
bill, the legislative session ended before the final version was approved. SB1400
requires 386 schools in the state with 40% or more of low-income children, to
establish school breakfast programs. Four years ago, IHC leaders convinced
legislators to provide state fiscal incentives to schools starting or expanding
breakfast. They appropriated around a million dollars a year for the State Fiscal
Incentives Program. In addition, IHC worked with ISBE to apply for and receive
a special grant of $768,000 from USDA to encourage schools without
breakfast to establish one. Although there have been over 500 school districts
that have taken advantage of the state fiscal incentives funds, there are still 400
schools with the majority of their students who are low-income without a
breakfast program. Currently, Illinois stands to lose a good portion of the
$768,000 in federal dollars if the breakfast mandate does not pass. Hungry
parents, along with many others, are part of IHC’s grassroots effort working for
passage of SB1400.
Although SB1400, school breakfast mandate, received bipartisan support and
a strong endorsement from the Governor in his State of the State address and
by writer Bob Condor in the Chicago Tribune, there was strong opposition to
it.The following story reveals the deep-seated class bias of some policymakers
in their strong opposition to the breakfast mandate. In Condor’s article he
relayed the story of one IHC Latina leader, a grandmother, who when testifying
before the Senate Education Committee was informed by one of the
members that “children are hungry because they have bad parents who don’t
care for them.” This leader and others in her community were outraged and
identified the class bias underlying those remarks and subsequently analyzed
the makeup of their school board and city council and found that low-income
Latinos and African Americans are underrepresented in both bodies.They are
building a diverse coalition to organize for representation in those two bodies.
IHC leaders across the state met with U.S. senate and house members about
the childhood nutrition programs reauthorization last spring. When the White
House proposed to change the way children are determined eligible for the
school meals programs and threatened to add unnecessary paperwork and
bureaucracy to the programs, IHC leaders successfully petitioned U.S.
policymakers. During the reauthorization of the Food Stamp Program, IHC
leaders were credited with successfully working with Senator Durbin to secure
a federal appropriation of $1.4 billion restoring food stamps to immigrants.
One of the most successful and comprehensive of the nutrition programs is
the WIC program for pregnant women and children up to age five. This
program combines nutrition education, nutritious foods and yearly health care
visits and immunizations for over 263,000 women, infants, and children in the
state. There are also WIC farmers markets available in some communities to
ensure access to healthy and fresh foods. IHC conducted statewide outreach
to ensure that moms, babies, and children who needed this program were
enrolled. IHC membership worked diligently to educate policymakers about
the need to fully fund this program.
IHC has been working in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to increase
enrollment in food stamps, KidCare and other income supports program.
Approximately, 87% of CPS students receive free and reduced-price lunch, a
good indication of food stamp eligibility.
In collaboration with CPS staff, over 2,000 households have applied for
nutrition and health assistance through this project and hundreds of parents
have been educated about their rights and responsibilities regarding programs
and benefits. IHC has trained over 100 CPS staff to use the web-based
application Real Benefits™. IHC has increased awareness among staff regarding
the programs and the potential benefits for both the families and the schools,
and hosted outreach events at neighborhood schools for parents to enroll in
food stamps, health insurance, and other income supports.
IHC launched a new campaign for universal breakfast in CPS. The universal
breakfast program in CPS will it make it easier for the estimated 250,000 kids
who receive free and reduced price lunch, but not breakfast to receive it.
Aldermen Rick Munoz and Joe Moore have pledged their support for a city
ordinance on universal school breakfast.When children receive insufficient food
or must skip a meal, they become dizzy and feel faint, they are tired and cannot
concentrate and the end result is their learning is impaired. Decades of
scientific research has proved that when children are hungry they cannot learn
and inadequate nutrition is a major cause of impaired cognitive development.
Lack of good nutrition during pregnancy can result in low-birth weights, failure
to thrive, and anemia. Hungry people are more likely to need health care and
are not as productive as well-fed people.
IHC believes that citizen participation is critical to eliminating hunger. IHC’s
immigrant organizing project, “Latinos Organized for Justice” (LOJ) hosted
candidate forums prior to the elections. LOJ’s in northwest Cook County
organized a forum for the Illinois House District 54 primary in February at their
church in Palatine. Over 200 Latinos attended, prompting a member of the
local League of Women Voters to observe it was the largest turnout for the
candidates. Immigrant leaders were excited to give their community an
opportunity to learn more about the candidates wanting to represent them in
Springfield. Leaders asked candidates what they would do about day labor-the
incumbent didn’t realize there were day labor agencies in her district and asked
leaders to help her learn more about it (they informed her there were six). In
August, LOJ’s in Kankakee sponsored a candidate’s forum for the first time to
learn more about candidates for Illinois House District 79.They were able to
bring a diverse group of community members to their first forum, and were
very proud of their civic participation. LOJ’s from western Lake County and
Palatine, in US Congressional House District 8, invited incumbent
Representative Phil Crane to participate in a candidate’s forum, but he
declined. Although his opponent readily accepted, leaders did not feel it was fair
to do it without both candidates. For several months they made great efforts
to meet with him, but he refused. LOJ’s organized a march and rally at his office
to demonstrate their frustration with his indifference to the concerns of these
constituents, who came from Wauconda, Palatine, Island Lake, Lake Zurich,
Mundelein, Barrington, and the Round Lake area.
LOJ’s focused on several areas including expansion of the child nutrition
programs, legalization and protection of immigrant workers, and working for a
change in state law around the issuance of driver’s licenses. In DuPage County,
LOJ’s are working with policymakers to address the lack of living wage jobs,
worker protections, affordable health care and income supports. In West
Chicago, LOJ focus on day labor convinced the Chair of the DuPage County
Republican Party and State Representatives to meet with leaders and learn
more about it and to discuss policy solutions.West Chg. City Council for the
first time addressed the problem of Day Labor and passed an ordinance.
Households with children experience food insecurity at double the rate of
households without children, and close to 40% of the households with income
below the poverty line were food insecure. The depth and severity of poverty
has increased over the years, so that poor children were poorer in 2001 than
any year since 1979 because the safety net programs did less to decrease the
severity of poverty than any year since then. Poverty rates generally rise and
incomes fall when unemployment increases significantly. In September 2004, the
Illinois unemployment rate was 6% and in Cook County, 6.4%, Kankakee
County, 7.3% and in the Southern tip of the state, three counties experienced
unemployment close to 10% or higher.
IHC developed a survey and has been capturing the experiences of individuals
seeking help at emergency food programs in the areas of employment, wages,
benefits and income support programs. In early January, IHC will formulate a
policy agenda based on their experiences. Over 450,000 Illinoisans work full time
at minimum wage, which is 59% of the poverty level for a family of four.
According to the Current Population Survey, 15.2% of children in Illinois live in
poverty and many live in households with working parents. On May 31, 2003,
the Illinois legislature approved an increase in the minimum wage from $5.15
an hour to $6.50 over 19 months. Although this is a start towards a living
wage, the reality is that during the 1990s the number of jobs that paid poverty level
wages in the state increased. This trend persists as more than half of the
growth in new jobs are those that pay poverty wages. In addition to low-wage
jobs, Illinois faces the serious problem of job loss without replacement. In 2002,
there were 64,500 jobs lost, which put Illinois at the top of the job loss among
the states.
Several years ago, the then Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, remarked, there are plenty of jobs at
$5.15 per hour but no housing costing $5.15.” A similar observation could be
made today in Illinois. In Cook County 54% of renters are unable to afford the
fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit which was $951 in 2003, and
statewide 50% of renters were unable to afford fair-market rent, based on
an annual renter income of $32,744.
IHC organized in communities with high percentages of eligible students
without SBP’s and provided data to enhance local knowledge of the number of
low-income children eligible, but not receiving SBP, child care, after school meals
and summer meals. IHC members and their school district leadership were
educated about SBP incentive dollars available through ISBE and encouraged
to either establish a SBP or increase the numbers of children in the program.
Grassroots leaders were organized to meet with their local and state
policymakers to educate them about the importance of the nutrition programs
in their communities.
IHC worked to target schools in the state with a great percentage of the
students eligible for free and reduced price meals but no program. IHC
conducted outreach to regional superintendents in targeted areas to make
them aware of the new opportunity for funding for start-up funds for school
breakfast, and the additional federal money available to schools for school
breakfast. Throughout the year IHC met with school administrators, teachers
and parents to help describe how successfully run programs have learned to
balance the costs for the programs and how to reach out to kids to ensure that
enrollment stays stable. IHC worked with community groups, business leaders,
policymakers and families in many of the targeted communities to solicit their
support in working to establish SBP in their schools.
IHC used our community networks to expand community ownership for the
crisis of hunger and poverty in our state. IHC worked with the media to raise
public awareness about hunger and the need for expansion of all the child
nutrition programs.
As a matter of economic justice as well as a social investment in our
communities, we should take full advantage of the nutrition programs. Not
meant as substitutes for living wage jobs, health care or affordable housing, they
are critical income supports which can give children, parents, and the elderly an
equal chance at thriving and being the productive members of their
communities that they would like to be. In order to eliminate hunger and food
insecurity, one must address the underlying causes and understand who is
hungry and why. There are three million children who are hungry in the U.S.,
not because there is not enough food, rather their families cannot afford to
purchase it.