Hungry Hoosiers are among us, and it's worse than you may have thought.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports one out of every seven Hoosier households is food insecure – meaning they don't know where their next meal may come from.
For 31-year-old Beth Thomas, it's more than just a statistic.
"I got a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old," she said. "They eat like 16-year-olds. The meals they get at school are important. It's the weekends that are the hardest."
There are 1,800 foodbanks around the state, but Emily Weikert Bryant, executive director of Feeding Indiana's Hungry, says they're just stopgaps.
"We need to make sure Hoosiers are working," she said. "That they are working in jobs with good wages. That they have enough to support their families. When they don't have enough, that's when we come in. The charitable sector distributed more than 82 million pounds of food last year to make sure they have enough to get back on their feet."
To see more, watch Derrik Thomas' story in the video player above.
