The Sobering Facts of Hunger in the United States:

1. 35.5 million people—including 12.6 million children—live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in ten households in the United States (10.9 percent).
2. Research shows that preschool and school-aged children who experience severe hunger have higher levels of chronic illness, anxiety and depression, and behavior problems than children with no hunger.
3. America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s largest network of food banks, reports an estimated 24 to 27 million people turned to the agencies they serve, as accounted for in their 2006 findings.

This Thanksgiving, Realtor.com has posted a list of 80 soup kitchen and food banks across the US.  Find a soup kitchen in your area and volunteer.

Also, if you want to help spread the word this holiday season, select the “Publishing” tab and embed the HTML in your website or blog. If you have any new food bank submissions, please leave them in the comments or email me and I’ll add them to the list.