The National Hunger Hotline 1-866-3 HUNGRY and 1-877-8 HAMBRE (1-866-348-6479 and 1-877-842-6273) refers people in need of emergency food assistance to food pantries, government programs, and model grassroots organizations that work to improve access to healthy, nutritious food, and build self-reliance. Help is available on Monday through Friday from 9am-6pm EST. Hablamos español. The Hotline is funded in part by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

At the end of July, I attended the Roots and Remedies gathering in San Austin, Texas.  The gathering, convened by the Praxis Project, is centered on community organizing and provides a space for organizers from around the country to plot, build and connect the dots between issues, movements and individuals. For me, gatherings like this are an important space to remind me of important ideas and reinforce concepts and values that are important to social movements.

Three concepts that particularly resonated from the weekend were those of collaboration, embracing and looking to one's culture as a source of strength and healing, and shedding colonized definitions of health and wellness. To illustrate some of these concepts, we went on a site visit to the Martinez Street Women's Center in East San Antonio. The resource center is located in what was historically a predominantly African-American neighborhood that has seen an increase in its Latino population in the last decade. This shifting of place and mixing of communities could have created tension in the neighborhood, but each community recognized they faced similar struggles and were stronger if they work together, particularly to support the emotional, physical and social well-being of women and girls.  The Women's Center took the approach that their cultures are to be celebrated, and that drawing from cultural traditions can heal communities and solve community problems. In fact, the center's motto is "Our Culture is Our Cure."

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"When politics affects food choices, as it almost always does, cartoonists become astute commentators and social critics."

After having written comprehensive, authoritative surveys on the topics of food politics, food marketing and labeling, food safely, pet food politics and calories, NYU professor Marion Nestle diverges from her usual style. In her latest book, Eat, Drink, Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics, Nestle explains food politics for a wide audience through 250 selected cartoons from the Cartoonist Group. Both approachable and thought-provoking, Eat, Drink, Vote touches on everything from agribusiness, GMOs and food safety to world hunger, obesity, food stamps, the food pyramid and Congress counting pizza as a vegetable.

The National School Breakfast program serves only 8.4 million children daily, 10.6 million less than the number of children who receive free or reduced-price lunch and 13.6 million shy of the estimated 22 million children living below the poverty line. Although efforts have been made to expand the program, a number of external factors have held the program back, and the absence of breakfast has been the focus of several recent studies on student performance. From increased absences to an overall lack of concentration, students without access to their first meal have been shown to suffer not only physically, but academically, putting their long-term success at stake.  Pioneering schools have found that moving breakfast out of the cafeteria and making it a part of the school day (breakfast after the bell) ensures more kids can start their day with a healthy meal. Click here to read  Hunger in Our Schools: Share Our Strength's Teachers Report 2013.

As students head back to school, now is a great time to make sure you've mapped your school on the crowdsourced school breakfast map, which will help Share Our Strength paint an unprecedented view of school breakfast programs across the country. 25,000 schools have already been mapped! Help identify how schools are serving school breakfast by going to NoKidHungry.org/BackToSchool to map your school.

The New Organizing Institute (NOI) is a community of organizers that aims to provide people with "the skills to engage others, the tools to build powerful campaigns, and a community of practice to help them learn and grow." Check out their website for helpful daily organizing tips and a variety of other resources, such as an organizer's toolbox, new media boot camp and data trainings.

The USDA released 2012 figures for US household food insecurity earlier this month. According to the report:

In 2012, 14.5 percent of U.S. households were food insecure. The percentage of U.S. households that were food insecure increased in 2008 and remained at that level through 2012- the highest recorded percentage since national monitoring of food security began in 1995.

In 2012, the more severe range of food insecurity, described as very low food security, was unchanged from 5.7 percent in 2011.