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At the end of the 2016-2017 academic year my supervisor, Lydia Landrey, asked me what I wanted to do this summer to help with United Way of King County’s Summer Food Invasion. Without missing a beat, I asked to work with the Hunger Intervention Program again. After working with the […]

A Second Summer with HIP

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“If food assistance went away, I would starve to death” commented one of the diners at our Senior Meals last month talking about what it would mean if this program went away. We were talking to some of the guests who join us for the meal regularly. We were trying […]

Moving from starving to thriving

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“Why eat juice from a can when I can eat the whole fruit?” “In my country, all the food we get is natural.” These are just some of the comments from participants at our food justice classes at Literacy Source this summer. Literacy Source offers classes for adult learners, many of […]

New country, new language, new food

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The time has finally come to say goodbye to our AmeriCorps members, Sam and Grace, for this program year. We’ll miss them dearly. Here is a piece written by Sam reflecting on her year with us! Has it really been a whole 10 months since I joined HIP? It feels […]

Five feet and three inches

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Hello! My name is Michael, and I am responsible for the HIP meal site at Paramount School Park! Paramount is a beautiful park, and sees so many people come through every day for lunch. One element that I have really enjoyed about the meal service program is the element of […]

The Gift of a Meal

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It’s hard to believe we’re already in our third full week of Summer Eats 2017! This year has been off to an amazing start all thanks to the work of our wonderful team of Summer VISTAs serving the meals at the sites each day. They have been such a fun […]

Meet our 2017 Summer VISTAs!

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One of the first lines of defense when someone like James falls into homelessness or poverty is our safety net programs including SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program that is more commonly known as Food Stamps) and Medicaid. These programs are literally lifeline for many families struggling to survive. They are investment in […]

Protect The Safety Net

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You may remember James from an earlier story here. James is not his real name, but all other details are true. He has been a regular diner at our Senior Meals for years. Recently I saw him at our meal and this piece is based on my conversation with him. – […]

James, almost two years later

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A note from Ty, our Summer Meals outreach and activities coordinator extraordinaire! It is the middle of June and Summer Eats is only a week away. Planning the activities and securing all of the volunteers has been a mingle of creativity, some long hours, and of course sheer luck! So […]

How Summer Eats is more than food