INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Treasure Coast Food Bank CEO Judith Cruz has been appointed to Feeding America’s strategic planning committee to help formulate the national hunger relief agency’s next 5-year plan to close the country’s meal gap.
Cruz was appointed to the Lead team that will help determine how to mobilize the public to fight hunger. Cruz traveled to Feeding America’s headquarters in Chicago on Wednesday for the first round of committee meetings.
“I feel honored to have been chosen to participate in helping to shape the strategic plan for Feeding America’s next five years,” Cruz said. “As more people fall into poverty and the meal gap widens, the work of Feeding America, and local food banks like Treasure Coast Food Bank, becomes more crucial.”
Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap was a break-through study released earlier this year that showed on a state and Congressional-level the percentage of people who are at risk of going hungry. It revealed that 18 percent of residents and 30 percent of children on the Treasure Coast don’t regularly know where their next meal will come from.
The committees, comprised of representatives from Feeding America and from food banks across the nation, expect to finish their work by June 2012.