This year, on September 24th at 5:30 p.m. at FNB field on City Island, your Pennsylvania State legislators will be playing in 2018's Capitol All Star game.

The game, which is sponsored by Pennsylvania Legislative Services and Wilson500, Inc., has raised nearly $100,000 to date for the state’s two food security organizations – Hunger-Free Pennsylvania and Feeding Pennsylvania.

So come watch your legislators and help strike out hunger! 

Amid the summer budget craze, a handful of legislators took a few minutes out of their day to meet in the Rotunda for the Capitol All-Star bat grab and draft.

While many things in policymaking are difficult to ascertain, one thing is for certain: poverty leads to a greater chance of hunger or food insecurity.

“There’s a lot of working-class families in Pennsylvania with children who are missing meals because they are making life decisions between the meal and clothing or medicine and things like that,” said Rep. Jake Wheatley (D-Allegheny), co-chair of the Legislative Hunger Caucus. “Your economics definitely correlates to your ability to provide food for yourself and your family.”

September is Hunger Action Month in Pennsylvania and across the country and according to those in the anti-hunger field, awareness is just the start of what the month is about in the effort to end hunger.

“Hunger Action Month is really a way for organizations like ours and the food banks across the state of Pennsylvania to educate people about the existence of hunger in Pennsylvania and encourage them to take action,” noted Caryn Long, executive director of Feeding Pennsylvania, an organization aiding and promoting food banks in Pennsylvania.

The Legislative Hunger Caucus held a ceremonial groundbreaking of the Capitol Hunger Garden Tuesday.

“This is one of the activities that has occurred in my tenure, my eight years in the General Assembly, that I am most proud,” said caucus co-chair Sen. Mike Brubaker (R-Lancaster). According to Sen. Brubaker, the Hunger Garden is a project that grows vegetables and exposes young people to various types of food. “There is education that takes place there,” he said. “It’s really an incredibly type of project.”

Sen. Brubaker noted it is the work of the Hunger Caucus to encourage the 49 other states to start a similar project and to donate the food from the Hunger Garden to a local food relief organization.

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