The little boy was so hungry, he pretended he was sick just to go to the school nurse’s office to eat the emergency supply of crackers. When the Sullivan County woman heard that, she knew she had to act. She started a community lunch program and served more than hungry 2,000 children and adults in about two months.

Another little boy in Orange County was crying in the elementary school nurse’s office on a Friday afternoon. The boy who ate two free meals per weekday in school said he was scared there wouldn’t be enough food at home for his family over the weekend. The nurse started one of the region’s first programs to give hungry kids like the boy backpacks of food for the weekend.

And when a six-year-old girl was in tears because she didn’t have 25 cents for the school lunch pizza, a teacher gave the girl a quarter. Then she joined with fellow faculty members and students in the Orange County school to start a group to raise awareness and help alleviate hunger in their slice of the state. It’s a state where about one of every seven of us — or some 3 million New Yorkers — need help from the government to buy food. About half of those........

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