 | The Cavalier daily. Friday, October 11, 1968 |  |
CA Hunger Surveyors
Need More Volunteers
In light of the continuing
controversy over last year's Federal
Hunger Report, a "food and
medical needs survey" is being
conducted this week in
neighboring Cumberland County.
Cumberland is one of the 14
Virginia Counties mentioned in the
report as an area where widespread
malnutrition exists.
The survey is being conducted
by the Central Virginia Community
Action Agency, which is funded by
the Office of Economic
Opportunity, and runs the
Emergency Food Program in
Virginia. Here at the University, the
Legal Aid Society is helping with
the project.
Mrs. Jeanette Cason, director of
the CVAA, says the survey "will
definitely show the extent of
malnutrition" in the County. The
agency also wants to find out what
access poor people there have to
medical care. When completed, the
survey will help the CVAA provide
improved food and medical services
in the area.
Many in Virginia, including
Governor Godwin, have been
publicly skeptical of the Hunger
Report, and the CVAA hopes this
survey will change their minds. The
agency, according to Mrs. Cason,
will canvass 1,933 homes - practically every house in the
county in an effort to clarify the
hunger situation once and for all.
The survey will try to find out
whether malnutrition is caused
simply by lack of proper foods, or
lack of education about what foods
to eat. There are parts of
Cumberland, where the Food
Program has never penetrated at all.
The agency would like to know the
reason for that.
The project will be finished by
October 16, when a report will be
sent to OEO in Washington, which
hopes to raise some eyebrows in
Richmond with it. The CVAA
which has just recently been
funded, hopes to step up its
program. The Legal Aid Society has
other projects planned: a voter
education and registration drive, a
welfare-needs survey, and a legal aid
needs survey.
The current project, meanwhile,
is a mammoth job, which urgently
needs people if it is going to be
finished by Wednesday. The forty
now working are far too few to
cover a few thousand houses in a
sparsely populated area.
The Legal Aid Society urges any
student interested in helping out
between now and the 16th to sign
up at the Law School. Or they can
drive to Columbia, Virginia, forty
minutes from the University where
the CVAA is located.
| The Cavalier daily. Friday, October 11, 1968 | |