The San Diego Hunger Coalition (SDHC) is challenging San Diegans to try feeding themselves with only $4.27 per day, a reality for 423,000 county residents enrolled in CalFresh food stamps.
On Sept. 19, the annual CalFresh Challenge begins. Residents of San Diego who take the challenge can accept the challenge for one day or a week, according to SDHC. Participants will share photos of their experience on social media and start a crowd-funding page to raise money for the Hunger Coalition.
The SDHC website says that people living in San Diego County who are enrolled in CalFresh receive $4.27 per day or $29.89 for the whole week. The CalFresh Challenge aims to raise awareness of hunger and how difficult it is to eat healthy on an extremely limited budget.
There are certain myths that SDHC hopes to debunk through spreading knowledge with the CalFresh challenge. The first message is that fraud is not rampant in the federal food assistance program. According to SDHC, CalFresh has a historically low fraud rate of less than two percent. Secondly, they’d like to firmly debunk the idea that people who use CalFresh are living an easy life on taxpayer dollars.
People who use the food stamps are barely able to get by and cannot buy enough food to be healthy or active, according to SDHC.
Anyone who accepts the CalFreshChallenge must stick to the budget of $4.27 a day. They cannot eat food previously purchased before the challenge began or accept free food from others.
Those who are interested in the CalFresh Challenge can sign up here.