Community and faith groups in Whitehall and Coplay are launching a battle against hunger in the area.

Following the general "uptick" of children in schools qualifying for free or reduced lunches and a recent survey in the school district, Communities That Care, a network of community members dedicated to keeping the area's youth on the right track, is making an effort to increase access to food for poor families in the Whitehall community.

This is the first in a series of articles on the problem of hunger in Whitehall and Coplay, and how community groups are working to fight the problem. CTC member Shari Noctor adopted hunger as one of the organization's priorities.

Calling the hunger issue in the area "disgusting," Noctor, chair of the food program of CTC who heads the hunger initiative, said in an interview she is trying to increase awareness of hunger in the area. She organized and funded a movie screening of the hunger documentary "A Place at the Table" June 23 at Fellowship Community's Zentz Community Center in Whitehall, followed by a discussion with officials in the area.

"Nobody here knows that we have a problem," Noctor said. "It's not poor people, these are working people. They don't have enough money for food."

The program included five panelists discussing the issue of hunger in the area and specific upcoming efforts to alleviate the problem. The panelists included Whitehall Township Mayor Edward D. Hozza Jr.; Laura Long, Whitehall Area Chamber of Commerce executive and Whitehall Foundation Board trustee; Dr. Lorie Hackett, assistant superintendent of the Whitehall-Coplay School District; Brenda Ringer from the Whitehall Food Pantry and Bob Walden of the national lobbying group Bread for the World.

The 2013 PA Youth Survey, which is the most recent data from the Whitehall-Coplay School District, showed that 14.2 percent of students in sixth, eighth, 10th, and 12th grades "worry that the food at home is going to run out before the family has money to buy more," according to the survey. The state rate for this is 9.5 percent.

The survey showed 16.1 percent of Whitehall-Coplay sixth-graders do not know where they will get their next meal. It also shows that 8.5 percent of 12th-graders in the district have skipped a meal because their family could not afford the food, with 5.8 percent being the state number.

Walden's group works to alleviate hunger on the national level by influencing Congress to increase federal spending to combat hunger. He said the federal government supplied $96.9 billion for food programs in 2011, compared to only $4.1 billion from private charities for food.

"Without federal programs, we would have an awful lot of very hungry people," Walden said.

Noctor said the hunger initiative in Whitehall and Coplay analyzed the information from the 2013 survey and found the food issue coming up as a problem. The issue also resulted after the group considered the rising number of children in Whitehall and Coplay qualifying for reduced or free school lunches, now around 52 percent.

The documentary, available for personal viewing on Netflix, chronicles several families struggling to keep food on the table and the surrounding problems associated with hunger nationally.

Raj Patel, the author of the book "Stuffed and Starved." who appears in the documentary, discusses food insecurity as a national issue, defining the concept as a person not knowing where the next meal is coming from. Patel says the 50 million people nationwide who would be considered food insecure are disenfranchised by the system, lacking the power to control their health through the food they eat.

"The reason people are hungry is not because of a shortage of food," Patel said. "It's about poverty."

Hozza also said at the meeting there are pockets of poverty in the township for a myriad of reasons, including unemployment and not making the living wage. He also said poverty includes areas in the Township including Cementon, Egypt through Fullerton.

"I want everyone to realize poverty and hunger doesn't just affect one portion of the township," Hozza said. "Sometimes if you address one issue then another one will disappear."

Hozza added the area should have more of an abundance of food donations because of the large amount of food warehouses in the Lehigh Valley, including warehouses for Nestle and Coca-Cola products.

Noctor said the next Whitehall and Coplay CTC meeting is July 28 and open to the public. She hopes to attract more people to the food initiative and fill spots for eight committees that she has set up for the group, including committees for public awareness and ones that focus on decreasing hunger in schools.

In addition to having working class residents who cannot afford to eat as well as they should, she also pointed to the "forgotten group" of senior citizens in the area who have difficulty cooking and having physical access to food.

"We need people to come and get on these committees and understand that this is an issue," Noctor said. "It's not just wealthy people here."

In two weeks, the next part in the series will discuss the role that local churches in Whitehall and Coplay will play in the battle against hunger in Whitehall and Coplay.