Girl Scouts Lesson About Hunger

My K daughter came home with a food drive request and she straight up told me it was for people who are homeless and hungry...so they can eat in the kitchen and don't have to ask for food on the streets.

I applaud what you are trying to do but they are probably too young to comprehend what it really means to be hungry at this point. Have the food drive, talk about how it might feel to not have any food for dinner night after night, etc. They are still at the age where they will only really hear the first part of what you say and everything else turns into blah, blah, blah.
I've led three different scout troops over the years and I've noticed that when it comes to community service and helping the less fortunate, between 3rd and 5th grade is when the kids really start to "get it." That's the age when the visits to the homeless shelters and soup kitchens really click for them, especially if they visit and help with family shelters, where they see kids their own age living.
And p.s. thank you for being a GS volunteer, it's such an amazing organization and your time and energy is HUGELY appreciated!!!

Why not see if the girls and parents can see an actual food bank in your area? Contact the food bank to see if it's possible. This way the girls can see where the food they are collecting actually goes, and possibly someone on staff can give them a short guided tour with facts, explaining that children their same age come there with their families for food, which might make it more personal and impressionable on them. The food bank may also have some resources for you to share with your troop.

Unfortunetly, the only statistic I know is:
Everytime you breathe, somewhere in the world, a child dies of hunger.
I have worked with older groups of kids where we do hunger drives. The kids have to go a number of hours (usually 24) without eating. Only juice and water are provided.
Perhaps you could skip serving a snack, to help drive the issue home.
Maybe you could find out the statistics in your area of how many a local food bank serves.

`Just my opinon but I don't think that is age appropriate for a scout lesson. What i mean is, the food drive is fine, and teaching your own child at home about people dying of hunger is fine, but to use a poem or "child friendly fact" seems odd to me for kindgergartners. I think simply the fact that we have lots and others don't is sufficeint for this age.

It might be a little more meaningful to make or collect blankets for the homeless. Kids sometimes understand about what a warm blanket means more than food since food seems so abundant to us. I might not be explaining that well, but it's just something else for you to consider.

Go online. Find statistics (for you, not yet for them) about which countries have the most and the least food per person. The World Health Organization and/or UN have these.

Pick maybe six countries -- two wealthy ones, two in the middle, two desperately hungry ones. Get Goldfish crackers and raisins. Then each girl draws a slip with a country name on it (expand depending on your number of girls). Each girl gets a small paper cup. The girls who are representing, say, the U.S. and France come up and get a heaping cup full of lots of Goldfish and raisins. The girls from the "middling" countries with higher hunger levels get maybe half a cup of just Goldfish, sorry, no sweet raisins. The girls from the hungriest countries get a single lonely Goldfish in their cup. That's all. Of course you will give all of them a full snack immediately to prevent meltdown, but let them see the point -- kids in country X have no limit on what they get to eat; kids in country Y don't get as much, and don't even think about getting treats; and kids in country Z always go to bed very hungry, and get sick a lot because they don't get good food to eat.

We did this at a higher level (more discussion of countries and what food poverty means) with our Juniors, and it was very effective.

Before you start, tell the girls there is a snack later, but that they will first get a special snack based on the countries they represent. Ask them to pay special attention to who gets what.

I taught my 3 and 5 year olds about starvation and death.. I even showed them pictures of starving kids in Africa (though I was careful about not using ones that were too graphic.)... of course, those were my kids, I understand being more cautious teaching other children.

Here is a great website for kids about combating hunger:
http://www.kidscanmakeadifference.org/

and here are more resources about lesson plans for kids and such on the topic:
http://kitandcaboodleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/hunger-and...

Also, there is a little girl who gave up her 9th birthday to ask for donations to Charity Water instead of her own birthday gifts. She was killed shortly after her birthday in a car accident. A website is now in her honor, asking kids to donate one of their birthdays for the same reason.

http://9thbirthday.org/

Like a few PPs have said - at Kindy age the food drive might best be explained by simply stating that a lot of families don't have enough food for reasons like parents being out of work.

Another service project idea that might be worth considering is Project Night Night http://www.projectnightnight.org/, which provides bags containing an age-appropriate book, plush toy, and blanket to children in homeless shelters. I think our troop was in 1st grade when we did this service project.