A new report shows an unprecedented number of Wisconsin residents are going hungry and are in need of aid.
More than 500,000 people in Wisconsin - 37 percent of them children - lack adequate supplies of food. The findings from Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger-relief organization, shows more than 70 percent of food pantries across the state are serving more people than they did four years ago.
Dan Stein, president of Second Harvest Food Bank of southwestern Wisconsin, says his group is working to get as much food as they can as fast as they can to people, but are seeing more need than ever before.
Since 2006, the southwestern region has seen an 83 percent increase in demand for emergency food assistance. Currently, about 141,000 people in southwestern Wisconsin receive food aid each year. Stein says these staggering statistics should invoke real faces, and highlight the dramatically increasing need for food assistance in Wisconsin. He says there's an increase in need because of the economy, and many people losing their job.
Stein says more and more people without jobs are forced to make the difficult choice of buying groceries or paying for their mortgage or medical care.
