Area nonprofits look to provide oasis for ‘food desert’ inhabitants

Mountain organizations are raising awareness for an issue that plagues nearly every North Carolina community, yet often goes ignored. An open discussion in Asheville, entitled “WNC Food Deserts & Food Policy,” centered around the concept of “food deserts,” and how a growing tally of Tarheel families, particularly rural ones, are finding themselves isolated from a […]

Effects of poverty on WNC children’s education

“Growing up in a family living in poverty or near poverty negatively impacts a child’s health throughout his or her life,” according to NCChild’s 2014 Child Health Report Card. In the same report it also says that “education and health outcomes are also tightly intertwined; success in school and the number of years of schooling impact health […]

Tax season brings class war mentality to WNC, translates to moral war between citizens

Lower income individuals and families in WNC are receiving more of a tax return this year than last year as President Obama’s plan to pull the middle class out from below the poverty line begins to take shape. The U.S. Census Bureau released data in 2011 that stated nearly one out of every five mountain […]

Poverty in Western North Carolina

One of the biggest economic crisis’ facing this country is the unemployment rate and the effect of poverty on the American people. FRAC’s (Food Research and Action Center) analysis for the nation as a whole in 2011 shows that 18.6 percent of respondents reported food hardship that year – up modestly from the 2010 level (18 […]