From the publisher: New podcast series reveals hunger problem in Portage County

Six-hour bread lines.

A person digs through the garbage.

A 75-year-old Army veteran wonders aloud: “What the hell am I going to eat?”

This is Portage County as documented by a new four-part podcast called “United Relief,” produced by Odd Conduit Media in partnership with United Way of Portage County. 

The podcast follows brothers Patrick and Ben Childers as they report on the network of people fighting hunger here. (If their last name looks familiar, it’s because their father is Bill Childers, longtime director of United Way.)

And what they produced is eye-opening, even if you’re already familiar with the problem of local food insecurity. They started out intending to profile the Rural Relief Mobile Food Pantry, which The Portager has written about and supported over the years. But the scope of the project quickly expanded.

“Initially we were like, ‘Let’s follow around a small food pantry for a day and see what goes into this,’” Patrick told me when I interviewed them as part of the fourth episode of the podcast. “And we quickly learned that there’s a lot that goes into it. And so we kind of worked our way from there upwards into a larger scale of what’s going on at a county and even a state level.”

When you zoom out, you can see how our local problem has causes that run deep in our society — from the high cost of living to the lack of stable employment to the reduced funding for safety net programs. And it’s hitting families who’ve never needed help before: Rural Relief estimated 80% of their patrons were getting free food for the first time.

In the first episode, the brothers meet John Kennedy, who was then county treasurer and is now director of the Community Action Council of Portage County, and Commissioner Sabrina Christian-Bennett. They explained that hunger here isn’t limited to the poor. Working families, retirees and even homeowners are increasingly forced to rely on food aid as costs rise faster than wages. 

Both officials stressed that the problem ties directly to housing, utilities, and economic policy.

The second episode moves to United Way of Portage County and the Akron-Canton Foodbank, which serve as part of the county’s logistical and funding backbone. United Way connects hundreds of local programs through its 211 helpline, while the food bank gathers millions of pounds of donated food for regional distribution. Yet both face dwindling resources. Portage County’s annual federal grant for food and housing aid — only about $80,000 — was recently suspended.

In episode three, the focus shifts to Jason and Rena, a married couple who used to run Rural Relief Mobile Food Pantry out of a converted daycare bus. They delivered groceries to rural residents who can’t reach brick-and-mortar pantries. But even their effort was strained under inflation and shortages, and eventually they had to shut down. 

Individual initiatives are great, but they can’t replace institutional solutions, which are usually undergirded by federal and state funding.

The final episode wraps up the series with some of the insights they gained from the experience of reporting the podcast.

Their biggest takeaway: Charity and volunteers, well-meaning as they are, can’t replace true leadership. Hunger is a symptom of a much deeper economic injustice wrought by political paralysis, starting from our local county commissioners and running all the way to the halls of Congress.

America has enough food and enough goodwill — just not enough will from those in power to fix the system.

“Portage County is a microcosm of what’s happening all over this country, and I would love if Portage County could be a microcosm of a solution to this problem instead,” Patrick told me. 

“How about this? Let’s see which small county in America can work together despite political differences and resource challenges, and focus and prioritize solving this issue and be an example of how to get food into every child, adult, elderly person’s belly. And then let that be the microcosm that starts a revolution to change the way that we interact in order to feed our people.”

You can listen to the podcast here.

When you’re done, let’s start a discussion in The Portager about what our local leaders can accomplish in the face of the abdication of our state and federal officials. 

Over 20,000 people in Portage County don’t have enough to eat because they don’t have enough money to buy food. What then must we do?