Rhode Island Is Still Going Hungry. How is the state working to address the problem?

11/2016 – Rhode Island Monthly: If ever a community was food insecure, it was Plimoth Plantation. They settled on the shores of Cape Cod Bay with a goal of religious and economic liberty, but few survival skills. And, but for the intervention of a friendly Wampanoag Indian, Squanto, who taught them how to plant corn and squash — so goes our national myth — they would have died of starvation. Historians debate the real origins of Thanksgiving. But, whether it started as celebration of free enterprise or of the genocide of the Pequot tribe or of the colonists’ first successful harvest, it has become our national monument to food security. So, come November, the stores of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank are never greater. The banks, the scouts, the schools and the houses of worship collect truckloads of boxed stuffing, canned corn and turkeys for the Providence-based nonprofit. In one month, the Food Bank collects 1.2 million pounds of food — double any other month on the calendar. More