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Rep. Castro Talks Poverty At Texas Hunger Initiative Summit

The Texas Hunger Initiative closed out its three day hunger and poverty summit at Baylor University with a talk with Joaquin Castro moderated by Baylor President Ken Starr.

The general theme around this week’s summit was to create a public conversation focused around poverty and food insecurity on a local, state and national level.

The Texas Hunger Initiative brought in guest speakers and hosted sessions focusing on health, community organizing and justice. To close out the event Baylor president Ken Starr moderated a discussion with Congressman Joaquin Castro of San Antonio. Castro spoke on several topics, including congressional gridlock preventing legislation that could help many working poor families.

"We’re still coming out of what was a tough economy for a lot of years and there are still a lot of people that are down on their luck that want to work that want to be productive," Castro said. "Many of them that are working poor that simply need a little help.”

The Texas Hunger Initiative’s first Hunger Summit was held in 2009. They report since then 60 million more school breakfasts served to children each year in Texas schools. And the number of Texas children receiving Summer Meals has increased to more than 63,000 a day during the summer. However the Texas Hunger Initiative says one in four kids in Texas is still considered food insecure. 

Here's a link to the full interview:

Castro_Starr__Full_Interview_mixdown.mp3

Jill Ament is a reporter at KWBU. She hails from right here in Central Texas, growing up down the road in Gatesville. She graduated from Texas State University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication in May of 2012.