It’s Hunger Awareness Week and, here at NEPM, that means we are talking with folx involved with the fight against hunger with their proverbial boots on the ground here in western Massachusetts.
We start at the top with the head of the organization for which Monte will march next week, Andrew Morehouse, executive director for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. We hear about the ways that inflation and reduced government social assistance programs have affected their services to the area’s 199 food pantries and the increase in demand that’s occurred this year. Plus, we get into the newest leg for the March for the Food Bank, the Berkshire’s Mini-March.
Right next to the issue of hunger is that of housing insecurity. “Bittersweet Lane” is a new book that is a magical mix of memoir and hard looks at the effects of public housing policies and issues surrounding the lack of housing in the nation. We speak with the author Jamie Madden about his ongoing work in this subject, his thoughts on recent grassroots efforts toward affordable housing and more before his launch event at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley on Nov. 18.
