The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Yet every year, millions living here still suffer from hunger. In 2022, approximately 17 million households and 44 million individuals in the U.S. experienced food insecurity, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Within that population, 7.3 million children lived in homes where they didn’t get enough to eat.

While the root causes of hunger are complex, factors like unemployment, inflation and the country’s affordable housing crisis cause countless people to struggle to meet their most basic need—the need for food. For those on the front lines of food insecurity—whether they’re experiencing hunger or working to eradicate it—the issue is profoundly personal. Below are two such stories of hunger in America.

Zarina’s New Life Started With a Box of Donated Food

We came to this country as asylum seekers. My husband and I had been working for a state-owned oil company in Venezuela—I was a chemical engineer and he was a plant operator. Despite the difficult social and political situation at home, we were relatively comfortable, with stable jobs and a healthy 5-year-old son.

But that stability vanished in an instant when my husband, Fernando, reported that government troops were stealing gasoline from our employer. He thought he was doing the right thing—but instead, we were branded traitors to our country and forced to flee to Colombia. Two years later, when we returned, Fernando was brutally attacked at a government checkpoint. He was stabbed in the back.

That was when we made the decision to leave everything we knew behind and seek asylum in the United States. We made our way to Minneapolis, where we stayed with a friend who had worked for the same oil company. After 11 months, we moved into a shelter. Because we were unable to work, we had to rely on other people to help us put food on our son’s plate. The day we signed him up for school, I was unable to provide a consistent address for where we lived. That was when I realized we were truly homeless.

It wasn’t so much that we were starving. We were fortunate enough to have friends who were willing to let us lean on them. It was more that we lived in a state of perpetual uncertainty—not knowing how or when we’d get our next meal, not knowing where we’d live in a week, a month, a year.

I can tell you exactly when that changed. I was sitting at a bus stop, and a woman handed me a pamphlet for food assistance at the local Salvation Army. We went to pick up a box filled with meat, bread and produce. But we ended up getting much more than that. My husband and I spent hours talking to one of the officers, Josh, and learned all about The Salvation Army’s history of serving the less fortunate—and how no matter who you are, you can always come to them for a hot meal, spiritual nourishment and a helping hand.

Today, we’re corps officers ourselves, working directly with members of our community. When we received our work permits and Social Security cards, The Salvation Army hired us as interns and set us up in our own apartment. Eventually, that feeling of uncertainty was replaced by something else: the ability, for the first time since we left Venezuela, to exhale.

Josh’s Mission to End Hunger Hits Close to Home

As general secretary of The Salvation Army’s northern division, I see the effects of hunger up close every day. In 2018, when I started working in the Minneapolis suburbs, we were providing donated meat and canned goods to around 15 families a week. A couple of years later, when the pandemic hit, that number jumped to upward of 400. We secured a $200,000 grant to build our own food pantry to respond to the scale of need.

Today, with the impact of inflation, high housing costs and a new wave of immigration, similar numbers of people are struggling to put food on the table. In fact, I first met Zarina and her husband Fernando when they made an appointment at the food pantry. They didn’t realize The Salvation Army is also a church, one that’s worked for more than a century to help those in need.

I found their story immensely powerful. My family didn’t have a lot when I was growing up, although I didn’t realize how poor we really were until we came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico. In fact, when I was a kid, my own mother turned to The Salvation Army to help us get access to food and clothing. It makes the work I do today feel all the more personal.

Each day, I see the fundamental need and impact of our services across the community. Every one of The Salvation Army’s food pantries in the Twin Cities is operating over capacity. Some of our locations have pivoted to curbside distribution methods to make it easier to serve the large groups of people coming to us. The day I met Zarina and Fernando, there were families everywhere, nearly filling the room—each one waiting for the food they need to keep themselves and their children healthy.

And it’s not just happening in Minneapolis. It’s happening all over the country, in big cities and suburbs and small towns. This is why every donation matters—even a few cents put in a red kettle can make all the difference.

The Salvation Army works year-round to end hunger in our communities. Click below to empower its work and help people like Zarina and Josh.