A 10-year-old student in North Carolina was recently assigned a classroom exercise: write a persuasive essay to a member of Congress on an issue of his choosing. The student wrote to Representative Virginia Foxx and received a response that included the line: “my guess is that your teachers will not give you a good educational experience and help you learn to think as they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad.” It was an unusually aggressive response to a child participating in a basic civics assignment.
My work at MAZON includes working with educators and students from kindergarten through college, including through our Challah for Hunger program. In my experience, young people are often far more aware of issues affecting their communities than adults assume.
When I speak with students about hunger and ask whether they understand what “food insecurity” means, they don’t respond with policies or statistics. They speak from firsthand experience: seeing neighbors experiencing hunger, volunteering through schools and faith communities, or, as one eighth grade advocate from New York told me before her first visit to Capitol Hill to families, “my mom tells me to pack an extra granola bar to give to people I see on the street.”
Young people engage because of their proximity to the issue. Nearly 40% of SNAP participants are children, and policies around hunger shape the lives of students and their families every day. For some students, programs like the National School Lunch Program provide the only guaranteed meal they receive in a day. SNAP and WIC benefits help keep food on the table for millions of mothers and children across the country. Proposed policy changes, including expanded work requirements, could force some full-time college students and working families into impossible choices between work, education, and access to food.
When young people show up to oppose those changes, it’s often because they or someone they love would feel the consequences directly. Dismissing their opposition as indoctrination overlooks that young people are part of society too and are subjected to many of the same policies as adults, but with fewer ways to fight back, writing to a member of Congress may be one of the few tools they have to push back.
If a healthy democracy depends on people believing their voices matter, then no one, especially youth, should fear ridicule or dismissal for participating in public life. At MAZON, we invest in this belief by educating and training advocates of all backgrounds, supporting b’nai mitzvah projects, and working with educators, clergy, and community leaders to build the next generation of people who show up in this fight to end hunger.