Three Ways You Can Help OnMessage Fight Hunger

Having enough healthy, nutritious food is vital to a child’s emotional and physical development. But this holiday season, 15 million kids across the country will go to bed hungry.

In fact, 14 percent of U.S. households are food insecure, meaning they have limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food. Rates of food insecurity surge past the national average in households that are near or below the federal poverty line or headed by single parents. And while 59 percent of food-insecure households report participating in federal assistance programs, such as SNAP, it’s not enough to keep 48 million children, families and seniors from going hungry — or from being forced to choose between paying for groceries and paying for utilities, medicine, education or transportation.

OnMessage is fighting back. This past week, our team celebrated Thanksgiving by collecting more than 1,500 cans of non-perishable food items. We used them to “can-struct” our Christmas tree in our lobby. The cans will be donated to the North Texas Food Bank (NTFB), a nonprofit organization that works with 250 partner agencies to provide 63 million meals annually — that’s 170,000 meals each day — to hungry kids, families and seniors throughout 13 counties in North Texas.